Six Days After Christmas
by muchtvs
Summary: Ryan's misadventures during winter break. Strong language, violence, mature content. Complete, believe it or not.
1. Default Chapter

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own The OC. Sigh.

**Author's Note**: I know, I know. I should be working on my other project. But I got a bit stuck and this story was therapeutic. _Best_ will continue. Promise.

That said…this is my Christmas gift to my wonderbeta, crashcmb. I offered to write a Ryan centric story and she humbly accepted. And then, I made her actually HELP me write it, and then I made her beta it. (Wow, what a friend am I.)

We started this story before the Chrismukkah episode, when Lindsay's character was less developed and her relationship with the Cohens was not really established. We changed things a bit after Chrismukkah, but obviously, given the most recent episode, our take on the progression of all the various relationships during winter break was a bit different than Josh's. Darn TV reality.

Anyway, hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it.

It's all very self-indulgent.

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Six Days After Christmas

By crashcmb and muchtvs.

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Day one started the day after Chrismukkah.

Seth was grumbling, Sandy had a Chinese take-out indigestion hangover, complete with a pounding migraine, and Kirsten was pondering the return of an ugly-ass vase, compliments of a client whose name Ryan couldn't recall.

Of the three Cohens, Ryan felt the worse for Kirsten.

Sure, it was one fucking-ugly vase, but she wasn't really in the position to get rid of it.

The Cohen household was already one vase short.

"This sucks," Seth argued.

Too loud for Sandy, the poor man cringed in pain.

"I don't understand why I have to go. I hate the Emersons. Dad hates the Emersons." Seth pointed at his mother, "You go, you're the only one that likes them. Them and their stinky dog and the demon-seed twins."

"Seth," Kirsten tried half-hearted to slow him down, "the twins are older now. You haven't seen them for two years. I'm sure they are much better behaved."

"Yeah, you know what Mom? I seriously doubt that, ok? Evil grows stronger with time and good nutrition. Am I right Dad?"

"I don't know Seth," Sandy held his head, "I don't care. Just please stop talking."

"You're useless," Seth complained.

"Yes I am," Sandy agreed. "And so is arguing with your mother. So give it up and go pack."

"Ok, so, let's say I concede to this terribly unfair decision and go passively like a lamb to the slaughter. Explain to me again why Ryan doesn't have to experience the House of Hell."

The mention of his name snapped Ryan's head up. He looked back and forth between Sandy and Kirsten, praying that neither of them changed their position on the matter.

"Ryan doesn't know the Emersons, Seth. It's not fair to ask him to spend four days with perfect strangers."

"Plus," Sandy held a finger up even though his head lay flat on the kitchen counter, "Ryan has to valet at the Petersons' party on the 27th, right kid?"

"Yeah, right," Ryan nodded eagerly in agreement.

"And, need I remind you Seth," Kirsten continued her husband's train of thought, "that had you volunteered when Mrs. Peterson called a month ago, you too, would be free of this trip. But you said 'no, Ryan said 'yes', and now you need to go pack four pairs of clean underwear."

"Oh God," Seth groaned in disgust, flung his head back. "My life completely blows."

Not as much as that vase, thought Ryan.

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She called as Ryan sat on Seth's bed, watching him throw wrinkled clothing into a duffel bag, listening to him bitch, rant, vex.

"Ryan," Kirsten came into the room, smiling, her hand holding the phone out in his direction. "Lindsay's on the line for you."

He blushed slightly, tried to suppress a shy grin, and accepted the cordless from Kirsten with his head down. He muttered a soft, "Excuse me," and left the room, his right hand protectively shielding the receiver.

He didn't say hello until he was out on the patio, away from everyone, alone with her.

"Hi," she couldn't see his smile, and he couldn't hide it any longer.

"Oh good, I got a hold of you. I have a favor to ask."

Fast. She spoke so fast. Quicker than any girl he had ever dated. Faster even than Summer. She never stopped to see if he was listening, never bothered to make sure he was paying attention to her. Lindsay seemed to always just assume he was with her, in both mind and spirit.

She was right. He always was.

"Yeah, uh, sure, I mean yeah. Um, what do you need?" _Stumbling. Real smooth, Ryan. Moron_

"Oooookkkaaay," she reacted to his mismanaged words. "Are you alright? You sound off."

"Yes, I mean no, I mean, yeah, I'm good." He paused, cursed at his sudden decent into stupid, assured her, "Everything's great. What did you need?"

"Well," she resumed her off to the races pace, "I managed to snag our next Physics project. And half of it is research based, and I figured, if you aren't doing anything with our time off, maybe with could get a jump start so all we would have left is the lab portion when we go back in January. I've got a monster English Lit. paper due January 15th, so less Physics would be a good thing."

"Uh-huh."

"Is that a yes or a no?" She had a way of asking him something while actually telling him the answer.

She wanted a yes.

He gave it to her.

"Sure, sounds great. When do you want to get together?" _Tonight? Tonight works for me._

"Tomorrow? The library is open, I checked. I can catch the bus and be there by nine. My stupid car is on the fritz again. My mom promised me she would take it in, but she has to work all week, so, you know, it's all city transport for lucky me."

"No," Ryan reflexively answered.

"No….you can't go tomorrow?"

He shook his head. "No, not no, I mean, yes, I can meet you, but I'll pick you up, don't take the bus."

"Ok, well, thanks. Eight thirty? I'll buy us coffee on the way."

"I don't know," he finally was easing back into his old confidence. He teased her playfully, "If I'm getting up that early to go to the library during Christmas vacation, I'm thinking you owe me a full blown breakfast."

"Fine," she taunted back. "Just make sure your lazy ass picks me up by eight o'clock."

"You're on," he answered, hung up on that note. It was fun getting the last word.

He walked back into the house.

The entire kitchen emitted a warm glow, white Christmas lights still hung all around, twinkling. Kirsten had several candles lit, their aroma permeating every room. This is how he always imagined Christmas would feel, in a real home, with a real family.

Upstairs, he could still hear Seth yelling periodic complaints down the stairway.

"Ryan honey," Kirsten opened up the fridge, "I stopped at the grocery store today and loaded up on all of your favorites. Make sure you eat something substantial while we're gone, ok? And go to sleep at a decent hour. You have all the numbers, right? Rancho Palos Verde is only an hour away. Call if you need anything."

She closed the fridge door and asked him, "Are you ok with this? Us leaving you alone? Maybe you should come. Seth is exaggerating; the Emersons are not that bad. Ok, their dog does smell a little bit, but everything else he said, pure hyperbole. Trish is one of my best friends. She would love you. She grew up in Newport, but she's no Newpsie.I just don't know if it's fair to run out on you like this. Maybe with everything that has happened you should come with us."

Panicked that Kirsten's misguided guilt might force him to go, Ryan quickly told her, "I'll be fine. I'm going to get some studying done and catch up on some sleep."

On her way out of the kitchen, she kissed him on the cheek. "Ok, well, you'll call everyday, right?"

He nodded, smiled, in his head told Kirsten, _"I love you."_

As he settled the cordless back on its' cradle, it rang.

Ryan glanced at the caller ID, pressed the talk button.

"Don't hang up on me again Atwood," Lindsay threatened. "You really don't want to piss me off during the Christmas season."

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End of part 1


	2. Six Days After Christmas Part 2

Six Days After Christmas

Part 2

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Day two began early, in the Cohens' driveway.

Ryan helped Sandy situate the luggage in the trunk of the BMW.

"Ok kid," Sandy slammed the trunk shut, "we have to go over a few things. Don't take any of it personally. There are certain parental by-laws I have to enforce."

"Sure," Ryan answered, stuck his hands in his pocket. He watched Sandy with uncertainty, wondering where the conversation was going.

"I'll break it down in the most simple of language. No sex, no booze, no fights, no parties, no drugs, no parties with sexy girls doing drugs. Any questions?"

Ryan shook his head back and forth.

_Ha, Sandy forgot to outlaw porno on pay-per-view._

"And," Sandy dug into his back pocket, retrieved his wallet, "no arguing when I hand you this two hundred bucks, because you need gas for the Rover and maybe just some disposable cash for miscellaneous stuff and Kirsten and I need to feel like we won't have to worry about you being stranded without any resources."

He held out a wad of crisp twenties.

Ryan made no attempt to take accept the offering. Newport had robbed him of his desperateness. Money had lost value in his life. Fallen from a top priority to a casual after-thought.

"Come on," Sandy placed the cash in Ryan's hand, "don't make a big deal out of this. I'm not leaving you alone without money."

"I have money," Ryan protested, "I have a checking account and a debit card and money that I just got for Christmas. This isn't necessary, I have plenty of money."

"Well, now you have more," Sandy slapped him on the shoulder. "Behave yourself."

Ryan gave up, pocketed the bills.

"I left all the numbers on the kitchen counter, Kristen posted them on the fridge and Jimmy has a third set just in case. You have his phone number, right Ryan?"

"Yeah," Ryan nodded.

"Good. I told him to stop by in a couple of days to check on you. But I still want you calling us at least once a day, ok?"

"Uh-huh."

Sandy stopped talking for a second, stared at Ryan.

"You're one lucky bastard, getting out of this godforsaken trip, you know that don't you?"

"Absolutely," Ryan drawled, because yes he was and yes he knew.

"But, you know what? Kirsten needs this after Caleb's disastrous Chrismukkah revelation. Don't get me wrong Ryan, Lindsay seems like a fine girl. She'll make a great addition to the family, but getting away right now, out of town, is just what Kirsten could use."

Ryan glanced at his watch, 7:30.

"I uh, I should take off now," he motioned toward the Range Rover.

As he walked towards the truck he called out over his shoulder, "You left bail money, right?"

"That's not funny," Sandy threw a hand wave in Ryan's direction. "Besides, if anyone is liable to end up incarcerated over these next few days, a safer bet would be me or Seth."

"Well, you have my number," Ryan continued the joke. "Give me a call if you need me to come get you."

He was about to have a mansion to himself, with an unlocked liquor cabinet, no real supervision, and a fairly unlimited stream of funds.

Two years ago he would have partied 'til he puked. Maybe wake up in time to try and clean up. Maybe feel a little guilty.

Last year he might have had a few people over, or at least Marissa.

This year he realized he was looking forward to the 30th, when Kirsten and Sandy would come back and find everything in order, including their trust in him.

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She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, sneakers, a little bit of make-up, shiny lips, hair brushed but loose, blowing in the light morning breeze as she acknowledged his arrival with a slight wave.

Normal jeans.

Not too tight, or barely hanging on a set of bony hips. Not complicated with intricate designs or flashes of offbeat color, just a pair of well-worn jeans.

She looked so fucking hot.

He jumped out of the Rover and opened her door.

"Thanks," Lindsay smiled. He wondered if she caught him looking at her ass as she climbed into the truck. "Where do you want to go for breakfast?"

"I don't care, you pick." And he didn't care and he wanted her to pick, because she was still unfamiliar to him and he wanted to learn something new about her. Everyday he wanted to get to know her just a little bit more.

"Clancy's? They have really good French toast."

"Yeah, that sounds good."

"And blueberry muffins. They make the best blueberry muffins."

"How are you?" He asked cautiously. "Are you doing ok? With everything?"

"You know what?" She looked out the window, "I don't want to talk about what happened with…my father. Can we just pretend, for a little while, that my life hasn't completely been turned upside down?"

"Yeah," Ryan concentrated on the road, "Yeah, I mean, of course." They came to a stoplight and he added quietly, "But if you want to talk about it…"

"Thank you," she smiled.

A few blocks later, Lindsay played with the radio, found a song she liked, sang along as they drove to the restaurant.

She was so different than most girls. Unguarded. Seemed to barely notice that she was in someone else's car, controlling their radio, singing off key, to an extremely cheesy pop song.

Seth's brain would have exploded two miles back, a combustible combination of top forty, meaningless lyrics and tone-deaf girl.

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They left the library at 4:00 p.m. He had to get home, shower, and arrive at the Petersons' by 6:00 p.m.

"So, you volunteered to park cars, and that's why you get to stay home while Seth had to go to Rancho with his parents?"

"Pretty much," Ryan grinned.

"And the Cohens have no problem leaving you alone for four days?"

"Nope," Ryan smiled smugly, "I'm very trustworthy."

"Uh-huh," Lindsay deadpanned.

"What are you doing tonight?" Ryan poked her in the stomach.

"Who me?" Lindsay pushed his hand away. "I'm busy. I plan on doing nothing until around eight o'clock when I intend to do more nothing while wearing pajamas and sitting on my bed."

_Naked. Maybe she sleeps naked. Maybe sometimes she masturbates before she falls to asleep. Maybe…_

"Ryan," Lindsay waved a hand in front of his face, snapped once. "Hello? Ryan Atwood. You just went past my street. What are you thinking about?"

"Huh?" He snuck a guilty glance in her direction, "Um, sorry, should I turn around or can I go a different way?"

She shook her head in mock disgust, "It doesn't matter. This way is fine."

When they arrived at her house, he realized there was no way in hell he wanted her to leave. No way was he going to go park some fucking cars while she was sitting home alone in pajamas, or maybe even no pajamas.

_Fuck that. _

"Um, you could come with me tonight, if you wanted, to the Petersons'. I think they might need a few more people. And the tips are decent. Seth and I did it last year."

Lindsay held on to the door handle, scrunched up her nose, considered his proposal. He figured it was the promise of money and not necessarily the thought of being with him that swayed her decision.

"Are you sure it's ok?"

"Yeah," Ryan lied. "Of course, I'm positive, it's no big deal. Do you have black pants and a long-sleeved white shirt?"

She did.

He waited in the truck as she ran to get them.

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Mrs. Peterson kissed him absently on the cheek.

Mr. Peterson shook his hand.

Ryan doubted that either of them remembered his name.

They barely acknowledged Lindsay, which was fine with Ryan. He was panicked the whole way over that they would say no to her helping and make him look like an idiot for dragging her along.

"Thanks for bringing me tonight," she said to him, as they sat at the bottom of the stone steps that glided up a perfect path to the Petersons' ornate double doors. "This is an upgrade for my night, as pitiful as that sounds."

"Yeah," Ryan scratched the back of his head, "It's probably not in either of our best interests to tell anyone how we spent today."

"What?" she faked ignorance, "Are you saying we're losers? Breakfast at eight a.m., library 'til four, parking cars at night? People PAY to live this life."

Ryan sat back, tried to get comfortable while they waited for the guests to arrive.

"Well, when you put it like that then…yes, we are huge losers."

"Shut up!" Lindsay shoved him hard, caught him off guard, and then fumbled to catch him as he lost his balance and hit his cheek on the hard concrete.

"Oh shit, Ryan, I'm so sorry. Oh my god, are you ok? I'm such an idiot."

She whipped out a tissue from somewhere, pressed it against his bleeding bottom lip and helped him sit back up, his weight causing her to list slightly.

"Ow!" He exaggerated, but she looked so miserable that he immediately dropped the act.

"I'm fine. It's not even bleeding anymore. See?" He lifted the tissue away from his lip, licked at it with a swipe of his tongue, dabbed with a finger to make sure there was indeed no more blood.

"Let me see," she gently moved his hand away. "God, I'm such a jerk."

Lindsay touched Ryan's lip with a soft finger.

He held his breath.

When she leaned in and kissed him, he returned the effort, cupping the back of her neck, gently slipping his tongue into her small mouth, exploring every inch of it.

"I am so sorry," she apologized once more.

Ryan smiled. "I'm not."

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Rich people tip well.

Drunken rich people tip even better.

By midnight, Ryan knew they would be driving some really drunken rich people home.

At three a.m., he and Lindsay dropped off the last couple. He opened the Clarks' front door and forced a polite smile as he handed Mr. Clark the keys to one cherry red Ferrari.

"You're a damn good kid," the man slurred. "I wish my own fucking, worthless son was half as good as you."

Ryan wasn't sure what to say, so he fell back on an old-faithful.

"Um, thank you."

When Mrs. Clark tried to tip him, Ryan rejected the money, reminded the woman, "You already gave me a tip, so, good night." He started to close the door.

"You're the boy that lives with Sandy and Kirsten Cohen?" Mrs. Clark asked.

Ryan nodded. The admission shouldn't still embarrass him, but it did. He would never been a true Newport Beach resident, these people would always be wary of him, think of him as the juvenile delinquent charity case.

"Well you're absolutely charming. I have no idea what the hell Julie Cooper's…" Mrs. Clark made a "phew" sound and gestured in the air, "Sorry, Julie **_Nichol's_** problem is. You are certainly not the thug she's always making you out to be."

Ryan blew out a breath. He was pretty sure she was trying to compliment him but it was late and Lindsay was waiting in the Rover and he just wanted to go to fucking bed.

Mr. Clark settled the matter with a brisk good night and a closed door.

Ryan jogged to the Rover.

"Do you want to drive?" Lindsay asked him.

"Naw, you know where you're going better than I do." Ryan settled his head back and didn't realize he had fallen asleep until he felt Lindsay gently shaking his shoulder.

"Hey, we're at my house," she quietly informed him, put the Rover in park. "So, thanks. I actually had a good time tonight, although for the life of me I can't explain why."

Ryan scrambled out of the truck, opened her door.

Gave her a long goodnight kiss.

"I'll see you later," Lindsay smiled, finally separating from him. She started to walk away, and then turned back once to wave.

Ryan watched her go, his brain still trying to wake up enough to drive home.

"Hey, wait up," he called out to her. "You said your car is screwed up?"

"Yeah," Lindsay confirmed. "I called my mom tonight, to let her know we'd be late, and she brought it to this guy she knows who is a mechanic. He thinks it's going to be at least five hundred dollars, which completely sucks."

Ryan fished around in his pants pocket, drew out a pile of wadded up bills that he had made in tips. He had no idea how much there was, but it had to be at least three hundred bucks.

"Here," he held out the lump of money.

She stared daggers of contempt at him. "Um, I have my own money. Remember? I parked my own fair share of cars tonight. I don't need your money, thanks."

_Fuck, she's insulted. Idiot. Now you've ruined it and she's back to thinking you're a social reject._

"You need to get your car fixed. Does it really matter if you take some of my tip money to do it?"

Her face softened.

Ryan saw an in and kept on shoving, "If you don't need all of it, just give me back any change. But it's not like I slaved away for this and you need a car that moves and I need a lab partner that isn't dependent on public transportation."

Her features relaxed entirely. "I really, completely and totally misjudged you that first day at school. I have no idea why you even still talked to me after the way I treated you."

The second day after Christmas ended in Lindsay's driveway, with Ryan solving her most pressing problem and walking her to her door, not leaving her alone until the door was safely open, and not before giving her a dazzling goodbye smile.

And Lindsay wondered how long it would last, whatever it was that they were building.

Whatever was evolving between her, and this quiet, shy, amazing boy.

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End of part 2


	3. Six Days After Christmas Part 3

Six Days After Christmas

Part 3

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On the third day after Christmas, Ryan ate a late breakfast.

He woke up so hungry that he resorted to a Tupperware container in order to hold an obscenely large portion of Cap'N Crunch.

Can't have any milk spilling.

He didn't bother putting any additional clothes on.

He was a man of leisure, sitting in the kitchen, wearing only boxers and bare feet, slurping and chewing a gluttonous amount of processed cereal.

Life was damn good.

Seth called at noon, demanding attention.

Ryan put him on speakerphone.

"The dog has gained weight. I'm no Vet, but I'd say it has definitely developed a serious case of gingivitis to go along with its' farting issues. I'm in hell Ryan. Oh, and Thing One deleted everything on my iPod and I'm pretty sure Thing Two is plotting my death. I just know, 'cause of the way it looks at me. What are you doing? Did Summer call? Did Alex call? Did anyone call? You miss me, right? If I end up dying here, you'll organize a grand jury inquest on my behalf, won't you? Are you there? Are you listening to a word I'm saying Ryan?"

"Uh-huh." It wasn't a complete lie. "Dog stinks, kids are scary, and vacation is crappy. Anything else?"

"No, thanks, really Ryan, your sympathy for my plight is positively overwhelming. I'll let you get back to whatever it is you're not but should be doing, like having a hellacious party with strippers named Bambi and Boobs."

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Kirsten called at two.

He wondered if she had a checklist.

Eating…yes.

Sleeping…yes.

Too much studying…no.

"Make sure you have some fun, ok Ryan?"

He assured her he would.

"But not too much fun and absolutely no illegal fun."

Of course not he scoffed.

_Thank you for caring about me._

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He fell back asleep sometime between three and four in the afternoon.

Woke up at six on the couch, confused, when the doorbell invaded his dreams.

Earlier he had managed to put on sweats and a t-shirt but he was pretty sure he looked like a robber or a homeless person.

Maybe a robber shaking down a homeless person.

He debated whether or not to even answer it.

But the ring was followed by a knock and then another ring.

He squinted and spied through the peephole.

Lindsay.

Another knock, "I know you're in there Atwood. I already tried the pool house."

He sighed and let her in.

"You look like shit."

He thanked her for her concern.

She handed him a neatly folded pack of bills. "Sorry, it's just fifty-seven bucks. I really appreciate what you did Ryan. I don't think I know anyone who would have just handed over money like that."

_I do_, thought Ryan. _I learned from the best._

He hated praise.

He was allergic to it, like Seth was to manual labor.

It made him uncomfortable, unsure of how to respond.

She took his silence as a sign to go.

"Ok, well, I'll see you."

"Uh…movie?" he proposed clumsily. "If you're not doing anything. 'Cause I'm not, and you're already out here and," he waved the bills in his hand, "I've got exactly fifty-seven dollars."

She shrugged indifference but she'd never survive in Vegas or Reno. He could see a smile forming at the corners of her lips.

"Sure, why not? But you are going to take a shower, right?"

_Absolutely, why don't you join me?_

"Yeah," he shook his head. "Come on in. Are your hungry? Do you want anything to drink?"

God what had happened to him? He had a hot girl and a house to himself and suddenly he was the fucking food guy from _Queer Eye for the Straight Guy_.

She said she was fine and settled at the computer to find movie listings. By the time Ryan returned from his shower, she had made herself comfortable, munching on chips and flipping from channel to channel.

"I'm trying not to be astonished by this house, by what I'm a part of now." Lindsay confessed. "But it's impossible not to be. What's it like, living like this? I can't even imagine this lifestyle. They have more bags of snack chips than we have items of food in our fridge. I know that sounds stupid, to count people's chips but…"

"Um, twelve," Ryan interrupted her, lowered his head, whispered the number.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"When I first got here, I counted. They had twelve different kinds of bread." He looked up at her and Lindsay was ashamed of herself for forgetting that once upon a time Ryan most likely lived in conditions far worse than she could imagine. This was no more his standard of living than hers.

"Wow, no wonder you're in Pre-Calculus, you're quick with the math."

He laughed at her stupid joke and she watched with relief as his easy,mischievous smile reappeared.

Some things better left to the past.

Lindsay made a mental note not to ever comment on where or how he lived.

It didn't matter what his current address was.

Ryan couldn't be farther from Newport if he moved back to Chino.

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They decided the movie choices were boring. With Seth safely tucked away in Rancho Palos Verdes, far, far removed from the Bait Shop, the boardwalk seemed a more interesting diversion.

They ate dinner at a small seaside hut and sat on the beach, watching people and just talking. He asked her if she wanted to go back to his house, play some videos, watch some TV. But she told him no. She loved the ocean, wanted him to love it as much as she did.

Eventually it got late and Lindsay yawned.

"I have to go. My mom wants me home by midnight."

Ryan glanced at his watch. Shit, 11:45. How the hell had that happened?

When they got to the parking lot, most of the crowd was gone. Just a few cars were scattered haphazardly.

Ryan automatically reached for her hand.

It was dark, relatively abandoned and even Newport was dangerous when the lights were turned off.

She hesitated at first and then molded her hand into his. They had held hands before, but the sensation was still a thrill, still made her smile inside, still made her wonder why he wanted to hold her hand, and not that beautiful girl, the one he used to date, the girl who lived in the palace and had the legs that didn't stop and the white teeth and perfect skin.

Why was he here with her, Lindsay wondered, when he could be with that girl?

A harsh tug from behind abruptly scattered her thoughts, tore her from Ryan's grasp.

What the fuck?

Bad things happened quickly, and slowly, all at the same time. Lindsay remembered this from when she was twelve and her mom's car crashed into a cement pile-on. She wasn't hurt, but she'd never forget the strange blend of slow motion and fast action as the car spun out of control.

It was happening now, fast and slow, slow but fast, a man slapping at her, spinning her around by her purse strap, farther away from Ryan, and screaming, repeating the same thing at her, "Let go of your fucking purse lady!"

And then Ryan rebounded and suddenly the guy was off her and on the ground.

Now Ryan was the one yelling like a crazy man, over and over again, "Get your fucking hands off her. Leave her alone you piece of shit."

Fists up and down, but consistently landing on the man's face. Ryan was caught up in a pattern; kick the guy in the side, yell, two quick blows to the face.

"Ryan," Lindsay found her voice. Was it her voice? She had never heard herself so shaky.

"Ryan, stop. You should stop now."

A kick, a yell, more punches. Ryan was drawing blood now and all Lindsay could think about was that the guy might have AIDS and now Ryan would get it and it would be all her fault.

Was this person even Ryan?

Ryan Atwood had been replaced by someone else, she was sure he was possessed.

"Ryan," she tried again. But her voice was still shaking and Ryan was still yelling.

The guy was unconscious now, Lindsay was sure of it. So in addition to AIDS, Ryan would now be committing manslaughter on her behalf. She had to do something to stop him.

"Ryan!" she screamed. "Ryan, stop it, you're killing him."

And he stopped as suddenly as he began.

He leaned over the mugger, heaving deep breaths, bracing himself with one hand on the parking lot asphalt; the other smearing sprayed blood off his face.

He looked up at her, panting.

"Ryan, we should go, we should go now."

She tugged at his arm and Ryan swayed from side to side as he managed to stand up.

The man moaned and Lindsay thanked God.

Noise meant alive.

Ryan stumbled forward, dazed, and Lindsay just started talking.

Anything, everything.

"Thank you, you saved my life Ryan, it's going to be ok, well get you cleaned up and call the police, this is self-defense. Everything's going to be fine."

She frantically scanned the dark parking lot. Where was Ryan's truck?

She spotted the black Range Rover and steered him to it, one faltering step at a time. When they reached the vehicle, Lindsay dug into Ryan's jeans pocket, concentrated on finding his keys.

"Hold it right there you motherfuckers."

Lindsay turned around slowly.

A man stood there.

With a gun.

"You little fuckers. That was my goddamn baby brother back there you rich little fucks. All we wanted was your purse bitch."

Lindsay started to cry.

The man stepped forward, holding the gun just like on TV, handle up, the barrel slightly down.

It was five minutes after midnight and on the fourth day after Christmas, Ryan Atwood stood in an almost empty parking lot with a gun to his temple.

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End of part 3


	4. Six Days After Christmas Part 4

Six Days After Christmas

Part 4

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"We didn't know," Lindsay offered breathlessly.

She struggled to keep her voice steady. The tears weren't helping, but she couldn't stop them. The entire situation had taken on a surreal quality. Maybe this wasn't real, maybe there was a hidden camera somewhere, and in a few seconds everyone would start laughing at her and Ryan would point and say, "Gotcha".

Ryan.

She glanced at him.

He had stopped his heavy breathing, stood rigid, blinking slowly, staring at the truck.

With a gun to his head.

How could anyone stand that motionless with a firearm pressed against his face?

Then she saw it, a flash from the corner of his eyes, in her direction; slow, deliberate movement, until he made contact with her eyes, locked on them.

"Sir," Lindsay's voice shook, she spoke to their assailant but kept her eyes pinned on Ryan. "Sir, we didn't know. We didn't know he wanted my purse. Here," She proceeded in slow motion, exaggerating every movement as she lifted the strap of her purse off from across her shoulder, over her head, until she held the small bag in her hand, held it out to the psycho that was holding a gun to Ryan's head.

"Here," she repeated. "See. Just take it."

"Chris!" The man shouted over his shoulder, wrenched his neck, trying to see his brother but keeping an eye on Ryan. "Chris get up. Get over here."

The other man, still on the ground from Ryan's beating, rose up on all fours, swayed like a newborn colt on unsteady limbs. "Shit," he snarled, hacked up a mouthful of blood and saliva. ""I don't know if I can move. He fucked me up."

Lindsay heard sounds of retching, she breathed a little faster.

His brother's pain distracted the man with the gun. He backed off slightly from Ryan, cranked his neck trying to get a better view of his brother. "Chris? Are you okay?"

Lindsay tore her eyes away from Ryan.

"You should take him home," she rushed the words out of her mouth, forced herself to look at the gunman. "Here, take my purse. This is what you wanted, right? You could take it and get out of here."

The man licked his lips, looked back and forth nervously between the purse, his brother and Ryan.

He wasn't really a man, noticed Lindsay. He couldn't be more than a few years older than her.

"Chris?" The guy called out, repeated his brother's name. He lowered the gun from Ryan's head, shoved it into his back, and nudged Ryan with it. "Go help him! Help him get up."

The man moved away from Ryan and refocused his aim on Lindsay. "Help him up or I will fucking shoot your girl. I just want to get out of here ok? This wasn't supposed to go down this way, but you fucked it all up, so either you help me with my brother or I will fucking lay you and your bitch out right here."

Ryan held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

"It's ok Lindsay," he said quietly, finally breaking his silence.

When he spoke again, his voice was slightly raised. He sounded different that he usually did in every day speak, his tone a strange combination of pleading and command, like he was asking permission to assert authority. "I'm gonna help you with your brother, ok man? But you gotta' take that gun off her. Please don't point it at her. You don't need to do that. Lower the gun and I'll go get your brother. I'll do whatever you want."

Ryan stared at the man. "Lindsay, do you promise to just stand there while I help this guy's brother?"

She nodded furiously, managed a feeble, "Yes."

"See?" Ryan asked, his tone gaining confidence. "She's not gonna cause any trouble. Just lower the gun, man, and I'll go help your brother up. Please, just lower the gun. You're scaring her."

The guy pointed the weapon to the ground, screamed at Ryan. "Shut up! Get him the fuck over here now!"

"It's ok," Ryan nodded slightly at Lindsay, actually managed a grim smile. "This will be over in a few minutes. I'm just going to help this guy out and then we can go."

She started to quietly cry again, kept nodding her head, watched as Ryan struggled to assist her attacker to his feet and then over to the Rover.

The gunman grabbed Lindsay by the arm, pulling her away as Ryan approached them, the injured man's weight causing Ryan to stumble.

"Put him in the fucking car!"

Ryan fumbled in his pocket, trying to get his keys out while balancing the injured man.

The younger brother spit in Ryan's face, "Fuck you."

The words came out slurred.

"Knock that shit off Chris," the older brother warned. "Just get in the goddamn car and keep your mouth shut."

Ryan wiped the spit off his face, finished loading the kid into the vehicle then backed away from the truck, held his hands up, the keys dangling from the right one.

Lindsay stared at him. How could he possibly be so together? The blood from the fight was still smeared on his face; the knees of his jeans and the palms of his hands dirty from the asphalt. If the cops came right now, they'd have a hard time figuring out whether Ryan was a victim or one of the assailants.

"Lindsay, give him your purse."

She nodded at Ryan's words, held the purse out and jumped, startled when the gunman snatched it from her hands.

"Lindsay," Ryan's voice continued it amazingly controlled pace, "start walking away, really slowly. It's going to be ok, just walk away."

"Ryan?"

He ignored the call of his name, stared at the guy with the gun. "Walk away Lindsay, nice and slow. I'll catch up with you in a minute."

The man followed Ryan's lead, ignoring Lindsay as well. He repositioned the aim of his gun so that it once again had Ryan in its' sight.

"Drop the keys and your wallet to the ground and move the fuck away from them."

Ryan complied.

The keys jiggled as they hit the parking lot's surface.

The man kept the gun pointed at Ryan, never took his eyes off him as he reached down and picked up Ryan's wallet along with the keys to the Rover.

"Lindsay, go away." Ryan's words now had urgency to them. "Please, just do it Lindsay."

But she couldn't move, couldn't do what he was telling her to do.

She was frozen in place.

Ryan knew something she didn't; she could hear it in his voice. He was still trying to protect her.

"You should not have fucked with my brother," the gunman warned Ryan. "He's only sixteen, man. He's a fucking kid. Now what I am supposed to do here, huh? What am I suppose to do with you, now that you've been so fucking disrespectful to my little brother?"

"I thought he was going to hurt her," Ryan backed up slightly. "Why don't you just get out of here before the cops come."

Somewhere in the dark night Lindsay could faintly hear a girl laughing. She resisted the urge to scream out for help. Ryan and the gunman were in a staring match, sizing each other up, Ryan's hands in the air, palms out.

"Get on your knees asshole," the man instructed Ryan.

"No," Lindsay reacted with panic to the command. "He said he was sorry. We didn't do anything wrong. Please just let us go."

"Lindsay get the hell out of here." Ryan was pleading with her now.

The man walked briskly towards Ryan, "Get on your knees, NOW!" He cocked the gun. "You should not have fucked with my brother," he muttered, then raised his voice. "Get on your knees or I will blow your fucking head off in front of her."

Ryan watched Lindsay, his eyes tracking her the entire time he slid to his knees, he mouthed, "Just go."

The guy aimed for the center of Ryan's head, placed the barrel of the gun on his hair.

Lindsay shook her head back and forth.

This was not happening.

She should do something, run, scream, try and tackle this maniac.

He was going to shoot Ryan in the head, in the middle of a beach parking lot, because of a purse that contained five bucks and a cell phone. Because Ryan fought back and kept her safe.

The man scratched at his hair with his free hand. "I should just fucking kill you," he taunted Ryan, "but your ass ain't worth my bullet."

He moved swiftly, raising the gun and a split second later used it like a mini-baseball bat, slamming it against the right side of Ryan's head.

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He saw flashes of silver slivers, floating, spinning in every direction, dancing crazily like shooting starts, or those twinkling white lights Kirsten loves so much..

Ryan could feel himself falling forward but for some reason his limbs had no desire to protect him and the side of his head smacked against the parking lot.

Ow.

He tasted dirt.

Suddenly he couldn't breathe. Something had taken all the oxygen away. Ryan tried to take a huge gulp of air, tried to figure out why nothing was coming in.

Then a force hit him harder, removing what little air was left in his lungs.

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Ryan dropped so quickly Lindsay had no time to even consider breaking his fall.

She watched helplessly as the man kicked Ryan several times hard in the abdomen and chest, with such force he almost tripped and fell. The assailant regained his balance and then delivered one last, even more powerful kick to Ryan's stomach.

This wasn't happening.

Ryan wasn't falling and the man wasn't scrambling to the driver's side of the Rover and jumping in and stealing Ryan's truck and Ryan wasn't laying on the ground, clutching his stomach, wrapped up in a ball, his movements stopping as he lost consciousness.

The Range Rover sped away, kicking up pieces of gravel, wheels squealing and Lindsay was left standing in the parking lot, hands to her side.

And then everything was quiet.

"Ryan?"

She said his name tentatively, made a few steps toward him.

God, what if that madman changed his mind. What if he came back?

Ryan wasn't moving; he wouldn't be able to defend himself.

"Help!" Lindsay screamed into the air. "Somebody please help us."

Blood from Ryan's head wound was flowing down the side of his face.

_Head wounds bleed. It's ok. Lots of blood is normal._

"Ryan?"

He wasn't waking up, wasn't going to help her, she was on her own.

"Help!" she tried yelling again, hoped someone would hear and bother to try and figure out why a teenage girl was screaming in the middle of the night.

Her phone was gone.

Ryan had a cell in his pocket. Lindsay had seen him use it earlier that evening.

She gingerly eased herself next to him, first settling on her knees and then sitting.

Ryan was lying on his stomach, face down. He had a head injury. How was she going to get to his jeans pocket without moving him?

Options.

Leave Ryan to get help. Move him to get to his cell phone and risk aggravating a head injury. Sit there and scream and hope that someone came.

Lindsay made a decision, took off her coat and placed it on top of Ryan.

"I'm going to go get help, ok Ryan?" It felt better to talk to him, even if he wasn't capable of listening.

Brain damage.

_How hard can you get hit before you have brain damage? _

Ryan groaned, made a strange wheezing sound.

His upper body shuddered and he started gagging.

Lindsay recognized the symptoms. He was going to throw up.

Shit.

Ryan was on his stomach. Can you choke on vomit if you're on your stomach? Health class always said to roll the person to their right side. But did you do that if there was a head injury, especially to the very side you're supposed to roll him to?

"Ryan," Lindsay apologized, her voice quivering, tears beginning to flow down her face again, "I don't know what to do."

In her head, she could almost hear him telling her it was ok, no big deal, just do whatever.

Lindsay snatched her coat back, balled it up, placed it as a pillow on the ground and somehow managed to rolled him to his left side just as vomit came pouring out.

_Make sure he can breathe._

What the hell had her health teacher said, something about securing an airway? Lindsay hesitated, her hand hovering around Ryan's mouth, and then pried it open, fished around with her finger hooked.

The digit came away slimy but hadn't met any resistance. She wiped her finger on her jeans.

Now that Ryan was on his side, she felt around his jeans pocket, dug out his cell phone.

Dialed 911.

She told the dispatcher that answered that she didn't know what to do and Ryan was choking and asked if maybe she had hurt him worse, by moving him. And he told her to stay calm and police and paramedics were on their way and did she know Ryan's last name and his address and his phone number and where his mom and dad where?

She knew the Cohens' number, gave him that.

Was he conscious?

No.

Was he breathing?

Yes.

Were the people that did this still there?

No.

Keep him warm the man told her. But her jacket was being used for a pillow.

She was useless.

More questions.

Did she know the license plate number of the Rover?

No.

Lindsay knew Ryan was seventeen, didn't have a clue if he had allergies to food or medication or if he had ever had a head injury before.

Could she hear the sirens? Help would be there momentarily.

She listened and realized that up ahead, a cop car was ripping through the parking lot; it's lights flashing a promise of blue and red salvation.

It pulled up, kept a bit of a distance.

A man approached her with his gun drawn.

Lindsay put her hand on Ryan's shoulder.

"Do you have a blanket?" she quietly asked the policeman. "I need to keep him warm."

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End of Part 4


	5. Six Days After Christmas Part 5

Six Days After Christmas

Part 5

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"Sweetheart."

The policeman smiled at Lindsay like she was a ticking time bomb ready to explode. He spoke to her in a slow, deliberate manner, exaggerating each word as if she had been the one hit on the head instead of Ryan. "We can't get a hold of any one at Ryan's house, honey. Do you know where his parents are? Did they go out this evening? It's important that we contact a parent."

Lindsay sat in the backseat of the police car, clutching a blanket.

It wasn't that cold out.

Why couldn't she get warm?

"Um. They aren't home. I'm not sure where they are, somewhere in Rancho Palos Verde I think. Ryan didn't tell me who they are staying with. Do you know if he's ok? Can I go with him to the hospital?"

_She had tried to stay near him, and the policeman had let her, for a few minutes. But once the ambulance arrived, she was quickly shoved to the sidelines, and then to the inside of the police car. The last thing she had been able to see was one of the paramedics cutting off Ryan's shirt. He wasn't breathing properly. They had barely checked him before slipping an oxygen mask over his face._

Another policeman stuck his head in the squad window. "They're ready to roll. Did you get parental consent?"

"Nope," Lindsay's cop answered. "No one's home at the boy's house. She says his folks are out of town. I haven't tried to call her parents yet. I'm gonna' take her statement at HOAG. I want someone to take a look at her, make sure she isn't hurt."

"I'm fine," Lindsay snapped.

They were talking about her like she was five years old. She half expected one of them to shove an ice cream cone into her hand, followed by a trite pat on the head.

"They didn't touch me."

The policeman turned around to face her. "Ok, I understand. You're fine. But you were just mugged and by your own admission repeatedly grabbed, not to mention the fact that you haven't stopped shaking since I arrived at the scene. You're shivering, you're worried about your friend and, sweetie, I'm a little concerned that you haven't even begun to process what happened to you tonight. So we're going to go to the hospital and let a nice doctor give you something to help settle your nerves and then you and I are going to write down everything that happened while we wait to find out how your friend is doing."

Lindsay stared defiantly at him. She couldn't tell if the man was being a condescending asshole or a caring father figure.

The policeman gave her a quick smile and then resumed his conversation with the other cop.

"Dispatch already put out an APB on the Rover. It's registered to the boy's parents. Hopefully we'll apprehend these sons of bitches tonight."

"Foster parents," Lindsay mumbled.

"What?" the cop hanging inside the window asked her, leaned in a little more.

"Ryan doesn't live with his parents. The Cohens are his legal guardians." She looked questioningly at the policemen. "Does that matter?"

"No, not at all," the first cop answered. "In fact, if anything, it simplifies things, makes treatment easier. If he's a ward of the state, the hospital can assume full parental rights."

"Ok," the second cop nodded, stood up straight. "I'll run a background check on the kid, let HOAG know what I find. I'll catch up with you at the hospital."

Lindsay felt the police car's engine turn over. Ahead, the ambulance exited the parking lot, lights flashing, siren blaring.

She pulled the blanket tighter.

The cop may be a bit of a male chauvinist pig, but at least he was talking to her, trying to make her feel better.

Ryan was all by himself in that ambulance.

He shouldn't be alone.

She remembered his phone. Maybe Ryan had the Cohens' cell numbers in it.

_Calm down._

She needed to stop freaking out and get control of herself, start thinking straight. It was the least she could do for Ryan. She'd spent the last few months getting to know him and Seth. They behaved more like biological brothers than just two teenagers who happened to share the same address.

Seth would want to be here for Ryan.

She needed to get a hold of the Cohens.

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"I've got decreased breath sounds on the right side," Jeff Alden called up to his partner. "I don't like his color, he looks shocky, working too hard to get air in. No sign of tracheal deviation or NVD, but his pressure's dropping, BP is 100 over 60 palpable, pulse 125 apical and respirations 32."

Jeff estimated that his patient had been unconscious for approximately fifteen minutes, maybe as long as twenty-five. He wasn't sure how much time had passed since the initial injury and the 911 call.

Respirations were shallow despite the supplemental oxygen.

The kid's right lung was in big trouble.

Jeff dreaded the combination of head and lung injuries. If he went ahead and intubated, he ran the risk of the patient regaining consciousness and becoming combative, resisting the assistance, not to mention it hurt like a bitch to have an endotracheal tube rammed down your throat.

But he couldn't administer sedation due to the head injury and paralyzing the patient without fully knocking him out was just plain cruel.

Double-edged sword that he hated.

At least they were close to the hospital and although the kid's breathing was labored, he was holding his own for the time being.

"Ryan, wake up."

He rubbed at Ryan's sternum, trying to elicit a response.

Nothing.

Jeff opened one eyelid and then another.

Pupils looked even.

Why wasn't this kid waking up?

The paramedic performed a second blood pressure check and grimaced when he noted no improvement. He started a second IV line in hopes the additional fluids he was now pumping into the teenager would help prevent any major organ damage due to shock.

That task completed, Jeff resumed a cursory evaluation of Ryan.

Skin was pale, cool to the touch and clammy. He lifted one of Ryan's hands, examined a few fingers. The nail beds were pale too, but had a decent refill, indicating that, for the moment, enough oxygen was managing to circulate through the kid's system.

Jeff sat back on his heels a second, studied his patient.

The cops on the scene told him it was a carjacking, and although they were still trying to get the full story, it appeared as though the kid on the gurney was the victim, beaten when he tried to defend the girl with him.

_Merry fucking Christmas huh kid?_

The boy's face was a mess but despite the many nasty looking lacerations, Jeff hadn't found any sign of major damage to Ryan's eyes, nose or neck. Airway was clear.

He leaned in close to his patient.

"Hey Ryan. Ryan Atwood. You need to wake up Ryan."

Jeff glanced at the ECG monitor. Ryan's pulse was fairly strong but tachycardic. It wasn't unexpected but he'd need to keep a close watch on it. The rapid heart beating could be an indicator of a dozen things, including internal bleeding.

Ryan's abdomen was already bruising. Jeff carefully probed and prodded around. It was flat and soft, with faint bowel sounds present in all four quadrants. He finished up the exam of Ryan's belly, measuring and documenting the circumference in order to provide the hospital a baseline for evaluating possible internal bleeding.

Jeff ran his fingers up and down Ryan extremities, assessing for possible breaks or soft tissue damage but found none.

It was time for this kid to wake up.

He flicked on his penlight and flashed its narrow beam of light in each of Ryan's eyes.

Pupils were still even. He might get off lucky with a mild or moderate concussion.

But the LOC was a problem and the longer the teenager stayed down, the more complicated things were gonna' get.

Jeff pinched the fleshy part of the boy's arm, tried yet again to get some level of awareness from him.

"Ryan, open your eyes for me. Open your eyes Ryan."

A-ha.

Head twitch.

The boy couldn't exactly move with his entire body strapped down, but there was a definite reaction to his name being called. Jeff pried one his Ryan's eyes open again and shined his penlight directly into it, left it there a second longer than before. The pupil constricted, tried to flee the assault of sudden light.

Hello!

Houston we have contact.

_'Bout time._

Jeff leaned over the kid, shouted, "Ryan Atwood. Open yours eyes. I need you to open your eyes Ryan."

Slits.

Just a little, but the kid was rallying.

Good for him.

The sooner they ruled out a significant brain injury, the sooner the pain meds and oblivion could begin.

By the sound of his breathing, the kid was facing a chest tube for sure. No one should have to be awake and aware for that shit.

"That's good Ryan, you're doing great. Tell you what, if you open your eyes for me, I'll promise not to flash this light in your eyes anymore. Ok Ryan? Come on buddy, open them up, all the way."

The kid's eyelids slid open a little more, exposing glazed blue eyes trying to hone in on Jeff.

_Probably wants me to shut the hell up and let him go back to sleep. Not gonna' happen._

"Ryan, listen to me. Look at me Ryan. My name is Jeff. I'm a paramedic. You were in an accident and hit your head. You're in an ambulance, on your way to HOAG. You're strapped down on a backboard Ryan. You're not going to be able to move. Don't worry about it. The doctors will take all this stuff off once they check you out."

Jeff moved quick, not knowing how long the kid would stay conscious. He placed his hand in Ryan's open left palm.

"Ryan, squeeze my hand."

The boy closed his eyes.

"Nah-uh. No go Ryan. I need you to open your eyes and squeeze my hand. Get your eyes back open Ryan."

The teenager blinked several times before opening his eyes again. He glimpsed in Jeff's general direction but the paramedic guessed that the kid was having difficulty focusing in on him.

"That's awesome Ryan. You're doing great. Squeeze my hand now. Squeeze my hand Ryan." Jeff wiggled his fingers, tickling the inside of Ryan's hand before placing three fingers flat in Ryan's palm. The paramedic waited for a few seconds, his patience rewarded by a strong grip.

He let out a silent sigh of relief, gave Ryan's bicep a pat to acknowledge the boy's cooperation. "That's great man, good job."

Better.

The kid was following simple commands.

Jeff maneuvered to Ryan's right side; placed three fingers in the teenager's right hand. "Now this hand, Ryan. Give me all you got. Squeeze my hand as hard as you can Ryan." Jeff repeated his attempts at stimulating a reaction. Ryan responded with much less pressure this time.

The right side was weak, confirming Jeff's suspicions that the lung on that side wasn't doing its' job properly, wasn't delivering enough oxygen. Either that or the head injury was resulting in partial paralysis.

Set back.

But at least the kid's brain didn't appear to be completely scrambled.

Considering the cops mentioned a vicious little pistol-whipping and five minutes ago the teenager was more or less bottoming out on the Glasgow, things were looking up.

Or not.

Ryan's chest heaved.

Now that he was awake, his body was fighting all the more to compensate for its lack of oxygen.

Jeff leaned close to Ryan's ear, "Ryan, I know you're having a little trouble breathing and I'm sure this entire situation is scary as hell but it's ok, I'm gonna get you through this and the doctors will have you fixed up in no time. I need you to just relax and concentrate on deep breaths until we get to the hospital. Slow, deep breaths Ryan," Jeff reminded the teen as he checked the boy's blood pressure.

It was still dropping.

Could be shock, could be the pneumothorax that Jeff was almost certain of.

Could be both.

He lifted the oxygen mask off Ryan's face and wasn't surprised to see the telltale bluish tint around the boy's lips.

_Don't do this kid, we're almost there._

Ryan's eyes flitted around the ambulance; his chest struggled to achieve a full breath.

Jeff felt the ambulance turn the curve leading to HOAG's emergency entrance.

The vehicle slowed down.

"Ryan, stay awake, hear me? It's very important that you stay awake Ryan. I'll go in with you. There's gonna' be people all over the place but don't worry about it. Let them do their jobs. Just relax and keep taking deep breaths."

The ambulance stopped and the back doors flung open.

"Here we go Ryan, remember, deep breaths."

Jeff relinquished control of his patient to a flurry of hospital personnel. The paramedic climbed out of the ambulance, lifting the multiple IV bags high above Ryan's gurney before his hands were liberated of the medical paraphernalia. He kept pace with the racing gurney as it entered the ER, reporting to the hospital staff, "Seventeen year old white male, assault victim with blunt head, chest and abdominal trauma. Hypoxic. Diaphoretic. BP 90 palp, pulse 135 with no arrhythmias, respirations 32 and shallow, diminished on the right side. Dyspneic. Abdomen soft. Pupils equal and reactive bilaterally. Down for approximately 25 minutes. Came to in route, nonverbal but responding to command. O2 at 100 non-rebreather mask, one liter of Lactated Ringer's in and 2 lines open."

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Sandy hid in the Emersons' guest room, reading a book. Ryan should be checking in any time now and then he could go to bed.

The lawyer smiled to himself.

Ryan was on a date.

Of course the kid hadn't called it that, but Sandy was pretty sure that "hanging out with Lindsay" was the equivalent of a hot date in the world of Ryan Atwood.

_"You're sleeping alone tonight, right Ryan?" Sandy had razzed him when the teen phoned earlier that evening. "No girls, no drugs, no parties and if I neglected to mention it before, no sex in my house…or my pool house, or Kirsten's car. But if you do have sex, use a condom. I'm not saying you should, God knows there are a million reason not to. But if you do decide to have sex and you need one, they're in my top dresser drawer."_

_Ryan had balked at the suggestion, assured Sandy he wouldn't be having any sex and was pretty sure Lindsay would kill him if he tried._

_No way, she was Kirsten's newly discovered sister. Could they please stop talking about it now? Please._

_Besides, she was just a friend._

_'So was Theresa,' Sandy had suppressed reminding the kid. Instead he had interjected, "Just be careful Ryan. We can't ever have a repeat of last summer."_

That was hours ago. Ryan had promised to call when he was safely home.

The phone rang.

Sandy glanced at the display, Ryan's cell number.

Excellent.

He was tired; it was time to go to bed.

"Hey kid," Sandy answered casually. "Did you have a good time tonight?"

"Mr. Cohen?"

A girl's voice, not Marissa, not Summer, must be Lindsay.

"Mr. Cohen?"

Was she crying?

Sandy sat straight up.

Where the hell was Ryan?

"What's wrong?"

Something had to be wrong. Why was Kirsten's newly discovered half-sister calling him on Ryan's cell at one A.M.?

"Is this Lindsay?"

"Mr. Cohen, you need to come back to Newport, Ryan's been in an accident."

Sandy scrambled off the bed, almost tripping in the exchange.

"Lindsay, what happened? Where's Ryan?"

The girl didn't give a reply to his question so Sandy repeated it.

A man's voice answered him.

"Is this Mr. Sanford Cohen?"

"Yes," Sandy willed himself to remain clam. "Whom am I speaking to?"

"Mr. Cohen, my name is Officer James Mitchell. I'm very sorry to inform you of this over the phone sir, but your foster son, Ryan Atwood, was the victim of a suspected assault this evening."

Sandy flung open the bedroom door.

"Sir, are you there?" the policeman questioned.

"Yes. Please, where's Ryan? Is he all right?"

"He's on his way to HOAG sir. I really don't have any further information, but I did respond to the scene and I can confirm that he was transported via ambulance. I'm really not at liberty to divulge any additional information. But he was unconscious at the scene and to the best of my knowledge, remained so at the time of transport."

"I understand," Sandy raced down the Emersons' stairs. "We're leaving right now. We'll be at the hospital within the hour."

"Drive safely sir," the policeman cautioned.

Sandy hung up on him.

"Kirsten," Sandy shouted, jumped the last three stairs, raced into the living room.

His wife was sitting on the couch with Trish Emerson. Both women looked up in surprise at his frenzied entrance.

"Sandy," Kirsten chastised, "what is wrong with you, honey? You're going to wake the whole house up."

"Kirsten, Ryan's been in an accident. I just got off the phone with a policeman. He wouldn't give me any details. All I know is that Ryan's being transported to HOAG. We need to go. Now."

Kirsten sat up straight, asked a confused, "What?"

"I'll get Seth," Trish offered quickly. "Do you want Keith or myself to drive you Sandy?"

Sandy ran his fingers through his hair, "No, thank you. I'm fine. We just need to get out of here. I'm going to go start the car Kirsten."

"Oh God," he heard his wife mutter as he grabbed the car keys and quickly exited the Emersons' home.

Minutes later the three Cohens were in the BMW, speeding back to Newport, Seth in the backseat, trying to make heads or tails of the situation.

Trying to ramble his way to comprehension.

"Well, did the cop say what was wrong? Why they were taking Ryan to the hospital? Do you know what happened? Was there a car accident?"

"I'm not sure Seth, the policeman mentioned something about Ryan being the victim of an assault."

Kirsten flinched at his words. "Ryan was beaten up badly enough to be taken to the hospital?"

"Maybe," Sandy projected. "I don't know honey. Assault can take more than one form."

"Well how did they know where to call us?" Seth questioned. "I mean Ryan has to be ok, he had to give them the Emersons' number, right? So he's fine. They probably just make you go to the hospital because of police procedure or something."

Sandy cleared his throat, tried to concentrate on the driving. "Lindsay had Ryan's phone. She called me on my cell."

"Lindsay was with Ryan? Is she all right?" Kirsten asked.

"She sounded shaken up, but the policeman didn't mention any injuries."

"Wait, Dad, if she has Ryan's phone, let's just call her back."

Sandy gripped the wheel.

Stupid.

He was positively stupid.

Seth was absolutely right.

Sandy tossed his phone into the back seat.

Seth promptly scooped it up.

"Do it," he instructed his son.

Kirsten sat motionless in the passenger seat, her arms wrapped around her midsection.

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Ryan waged a losing battle to catch his breath.

He was trying, but it was so hard. With each inhale, the pain felt like someone was jabbing at him with a pitchfork. He tried taking quick little breaths but it didn't help.

His heart was pounding; trying to claw it's way out of his chest.

Nothing made sense.

He didn't understand what was happening, barely knew where he was, and had no idea how he had gotten there.

Where were the Cohens?

Had he and Seth been in a car accident?

Ryan's head felt like it was going to split wide open, break in half.

He squeezed his eyes shut as the bed he was laying on started to move.

God, the light was so intense. Everything was blurry, like Christmas lights if you looked at them through a fishbowl.

Ryan felt himself coming to a stop and then lifted sideways, the movement causing his stomach to flip-flop. He started to reach for the oxygen mask covering his mouth, but his hands wouldn't work and his stomach was tired of waiting. He gagged on vomit as it rushed up his throat.

He was turned to his side, the continued movement only exacerbating the nausea and chest pain.

The oxygen mask disappeared, replaced by something loud and raspy, shoved into his mouth. A little vacuum, trying to suck out of him what little breath he had left.

Ryan choked.

He couldn't breathe.

He was dying and he didn't even know why.

Eventually the loud thing went away and the mask was back over his mouth.

Close to his ear he heard a familiar voice but he couldn't remember how he knew the person.

"Ryan, it's Jeff. You're doing fine buddy. We had to suction your mouth to get rid of the gross stuff. But it's over now, you did great. Concentrate on those breaths we talked about, nice and slow and deep, Ryan. Expand your chest as much as you can."

Ryan puffed rapidly, in and out.

It was no use.

He couldn't get enough air in to satisfy his burning lungs.

His chest was on fire.

Ryan recognized letters being called out, but they were scrambled, randomly arranged, as if a deranged Muppet was now in charge of a dysfunctional Sesame Street.

"KUB, ABG's, EKG, CBC."

His left eye was abruptly pried open again and a bright light flicked directly at him, then the right eye.

He felt cold hands pressing on his chest and stomach. He tried not to move, but couldn't resist when the hands touched his right side. He felt himself jerk and that made the pain even more unbearable, something stabbing him over and over again.

Voices were shouting at him, repeating his name, instructing him to open his eyes, squeeze a hand, wiggle his toes. Ryan tried his best to do everything the voices asked, hoping that they would leave him alone, stop hurting him.

He was freezing. They had taken his clothes. Why was this happening? Where were the Cohens? For the first time in a year and a half he wanted his mom. No matter what, she had always been good at comforting his physical pain, even when she could have prevented it.

Suddenly, he was turned to his side and something cold and hard was placed under his back. The voice told him to hold his breath. Jesus Christ, couldn't they make up their minds. First with the slow, deep breaths, now with the don't breathe. Like he could control anything to do with his breathing at this point. Then, just as quickly, he was turned again and the unwelcomed object was removed.

Ryan attempted to watch what was happening to him, but everything was out of focus.

It was painful to open his eyes, so he gave up and just kept them shut.

He lay exhausted; gulping in breaths so minute that he didn't think a person could survive with that little amount of air.

His body shuddered with each small movement. The voices were very distant now, almost nonexistent.

He whimpered softly as the bed was repositioned, his body raised up and his head leaned back.

Tears of pain escaped from his eyes and he didn't give a damn. If he could just catch his breath, he's be screaming like a fucking schoolgirl.

He'd never been in this much pain before.

Someone lifted his right arm above his head and something cold and slimy was smeared on his side.

And then a single voice, hovering somewhere above him, female.

He wished that it were Kirsten and that she would come and save him from this insanity.

"Ryan, we're going to give you something to put you asleep. I promise when you wake up you'll be able to breathe much better. Everything's all right Ryan, just go to sleep."

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Dr. Caulard watched his staff in action.

An extraordinary ballet, trauma.

Everyone knew their place, performed their jobs to a preprogrammed perfection.

There was an added tension in the room that was always present when the patient was young.

Nobody wanted to see children in the ER.

Quick responses from all present when the kid vomited.

Caulard ordered suction, waiting for the current frenzy to subside before a proper exam could begin.

"What's his name?"

"Ryan," someone answered the doctor. Caulard tracked the speaker, realized that Jeff Alden was still in the room, leaning over the teenager, offering words of encouragement.

The paramedics always hung around when a kid was involved.

"How are we doing with contacting Ryan's parents?" He asked his head nurse, Yvonne.

"Newport PD called in, he's in foster care," she answered. "Guardians are out of town but heading in, should be here within the hour."

"Ok," Caulard acknowledged the information. "What are we looking at guys?"

All at once the information flowed in, but somehow didn't overlap. Each individual contributed without interrupting one another.

"He's semi-conscious and responding, pupils are still even. Bleeding has slowed down. He's definitely going to need this gash stitched up."

"Belly is tender, there's some guarding on the right flank. At least two ribs are giving way. Definite bruising."

The ER doctor quickly began giving out instructions for a portable chest x-ray, KUB, ABG's, EKG, CBC, lytes, and urinalysis.

"Dr. Caulard, I'm not getting anything from the right lung."

Noting Ryan's continuing fight for breath, the ER doctor promptly called for a thoracostomy tray.

"This kid needs some relief. What are we thinking concerning the head trauma?"

Jeff Alden jumped in. "Other than the initial LOC doc, he's been as alert as possible, all things considered."

Someone else spoke up, quoted vitals.

Caulard made the decision to risk a sedative. At this point, the head injury was looking like the least of their problems.

"Let's go ahead with light sedation, enough to keep him from fighting us. We'll increase it as I gain confidence with the head injury."

His staff carried out the orders swiftly and within seconds the teenager was no longer conscious. Standing over the head of the gurney, Yvonne confirmed, "He's out."

Dr. Caulard first inserted the chest tube, demonstrating to an intern the proper placement and steps involved in the procedure. The med student looked almost as young as the kid on the bed.

With the chest tube in, Caulard quickly positioned Ryan's head for endotracheal tube insertion. He performed the intubation procedure himself, although he probably should have allowed the intern a stab at it.

To hell with it.

At this moment, the patient required oxygen more than the intern needed experience. The last thing the kid on the table needed was someone fumbling around for an airway . Caulard told the intern to listen to the chest sounds, assess proper placement of the breathing tube. The student nodded and stepped to the gurney.

The doctor ordered a repeat of the chest x-ray to confirm the ET and chest tube placement.

Ryan's stats swiftly showed signs of improvement, his skin pinking up with the introduction of the chest and endo tube.

With the teenager's struggle for breath over, Caulard concentrated on assessing his other injuries.

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Lindsay sat numb in the small, private waiting area that was adjacent to the HOAG Emergency Room.

Her personal policeman, AKA Officer Mitchell, came in followed by a man in blue scrubs. Lindsay supposed he was a doctor. He took her temperature, pulse, asked her questions, put his hands all over her neck, head, pressing here and there. She answered him and when the exam was over, asked softly, "Is Ryan ok? Did you see him? Can you check for me?"

The doctor glanced at Mitchell who shrugged.

"Please?" Lindsay asked quietly, "Can you just go check, make sure he's ok? His name is Ryan Atwood."

The doctor excused himself. He returned with a little white pill and a piss poor amount of information on Ryan, "Your friend is still being evaluated. I'd like you to take this. It'll help you calm down and relax. I just spoke to your mother, she's on her way right now."

Lindsay complied with the request. Within minutes, all her shaking had stopped. A new sensation slowly ebbing its way through her body, warming her, making her feel more like herself, less like a basket case.

Officer Mitchell handed her a steaming cup of something. "My daughter loves hot chocolate," he told Lindsay. "I figured you could use some."

She nodded, took a tentative sip. It was delicious. Her throat felt scratchy, the warm liquid soothed it.

Ryan's cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She flipped it open as quickly as possible.

Seth didn't even say hello before he began to drill her.

_Where was Ryan?_

_What the hell had happened?_

_Was Ryan ok?_

_What were the doctors telling her?_

Lindsay told him what she knew, that Ryan was unconscious, having trouble breathing.

Bleeding.

Kirsten Cohen came on the phone.

_How had it happened?_

_What were the police saying?_

_Was she all right?_

_Where was her mother? Did she have anyone with her?_

_Not to worry. _

_Ryan would be fine. _

_They would be there shortly_.

A family friend named Jimmy Cooper was coming to the hospital. Marissa's father. He would help her get some information on Ryan. Please be sure and call immediately if she found out anything.

Lindsay passed the time by answering Officer Mitchell's questions. Standing up, she methodically reenacted what had happened. Walking around the small room, pretending it was the parking lot. This is where the gunman had stood, and this is where Ryan was, when the man hit him and the brothers' descriptions, and their clothes, and their faces, and one was named Chris.

Mr. Cooper arrived, rumpled, a nervous wreck, excused himself, promising to come back with answers about Ryan and then sitting down dejected when he returned with none.

Sandy Cohen called.

_They were minutes away. _

_Had she heard anything about Ryan yet?_

Next thing she knew her mom was there and suddenly she was crying and couldn't stop.

Officer Mitchell shook her mother's hand, told Lindsay he'd be in touch, promised her that he was sure everything would work out.

And then Seth Cohen stormed in, followed by his parents.

Lindsay got control of herself.

Ryan's family was here. Her new family.

She owed them information, what little she could give.

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"Dan?" Caulard looked up at Yvonne from his cup of coffee.

"ICU called, he made it up fine. Vitals are holding steady."

"Good," the doctored responded. "Who's on tomorrow?"

"Um," Yvonne studied a manila folder in her hand, "Jackson and Elders."

"Let's assign him to Elders, I'm more comfortable with someone with pediatric trauma experience and Elders came to us with a hell of a lot."

Yvonne nodded and made a note on her paper.

"The foster parents just arrived. They're looking pretty frantic. Do you want me to stall them or are you ready to speak with them."

"I'll go now," Calaurd answered, thinking of his own son. Holding out information for parents was something he strived to avoid.

He swung open the waiting room door, glancing around at the small group gathered there.

It was hard to determine the foster parents. Everybody in the room fit the description of frantic looking.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cohen?"

A black haired man immediately stepped forward, held out his hand, "I'm Sandy Cohen. How's Ryan?"

Wanting a little more privacy and a smaller audience, the doctor suggested, "Why don't we step outside?"

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"Ryan sustained multiple injuries. He has a grade 3 concussion, the result of a blunt force trauma to his head. He had an initial loss of consciousness for approximately 25 minutes and arrived at the ER, semi-conscious, complying with simple commands, but disoriented and nonverbal. The good news is that the CT Scan is showing no signs of intracranial bleeding. His skull isn't fractured. Make no mistake, Ryan received one hell of a blow and a concussion of this grade can be tricky. But no bleeding is the first step to recovery, so we'll keep a close eye on him, repeat the CT Scan within the next ten hours and watch for any sign of hidden bleeding. With most grade 3 concussions there is some short term and possibly long term memory loss as well as other side-affects. We'll treat the symptoms as they appear."

Sandy took a deep breath. "It could have been worse, right? I mean basically this is fairly good news you're telling us."

"Yes," the doctor nodded. "Provided a bleed doesn't develop."

Sandy stared at him.

The doctor cleared his throat and continued.

"In addition to the head injury Ryan was repeatedly kicked in the abdomen. The force of the blows fractured several ribs, one of which punctured a hole in Ryan's right lung, causing a build up of air in his chest cavity. That put pressure on his lung, making it impossible for Ryan to breathe properly. By the time he made it to the hospital, the lung had collapsed. In order to relieve the pressure, we inserted a chest tube. This tube will help re-expand Ryan's lung, allowing it to function normally again."

"Well at least that's good news, right?" Seth asked eagerly. "I mean he can breathe and breathing is better than not being able to breathe so Ryan's ok, right? Can we see him?"

"Seth," Kirsten said quietly, "Let the doctor finish."

Caulard gave her a quick smile before continuing.

"Ryan's body expended a massive amount of energy trying to make that damaged lung work. He's worn out and he needs to rest in order to heal properly. Despite the chest tube, he's not able at this time to breathe efficiently on his own. We're assisting his breathing with a ventilator, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Ryan's body is doing much of the work. The ventilator is just a precaution. It insures that he's taking enough breaths per minute and that the breaths are deep enough to help the lung re-expand. We'll keep him sedated while he's on the ventilator but because of the head injury, we'll periodically allow him to surface for a few minutes to test his levels of response. He'll remain basically unconscious, unaware of everything that is happening to him. We'll also continue to monitor for any signs of internal bleeding. It wouldn't be uncommon, given the nature of Ryan's injuries, for an abdominal injury to be present but not manifesting. There's a significant amount of bruising and that bruising may be masking something a bit more critical. But things are looking promising for Ryan, although I'm sure given the amount of information I just dumped on you, it doesn't seem like it right now. All in all, he's a pretty fortunate young man. Providing he responds positively to the neuro-checks and his lung is able to rebound, he could be out of ICU and in a regular bed by as early as tomorrow night."

"So he's out of the woods?" Sandy asked hopefully.

The doctor bobbed his head back and forth with indecision.

"At this point Ryan's listed as critical but stable. I'm extremely optimistic but the injuries he sustained are very serious. There's always a chance of complications and the lung injury is going to affect his quality of breathing for some time. He vomited several times. We haven't found any indications that he aspirated any of the material, but with the lung injury, pneumonia is always a definite possibility. Once Ryan's out of the ICU, off the ventilator and up and moving around, we'll have a better understanding of what's going to be involved with his recovery. I'm not in a position to tell you that everything is absolutely fine. But keep in mind; my job is to be hypersensitive to what could happen, in order to prevent something from being overlooked. Ryan is stable. He's responding well to treatment. Every indication is pointing to a successful recovery. Go upstairs, sit with him, hold his hand, talk to him. You'll feel better. I'll be checking on him off and on throughout the night until I go off duty tomorrow afternoon."

Kirsten and Sandy thanked the doctor.

Seth remained uncharacteristically quiet, arms folded, head down.

"Seth, things could be worse," Sandy attempted to break the grim mood. "You heard what the doctor said. Ryan's going to be all right. Eventually."

"Are you kidding me?" Seth scoffed. "You guys did this. Ryan should have been with us or we should have been home with him. You guys would have never left me home alone for four days. But you always treat Ryan differently and now he's in the ICU and I hope you're happy with yourselves. I'm gonna' go see him and apologize for not being there when he needed me."

Seth took a detour into the waiting room because Lindsay was in there and no matter what had happened to Ryan tonight, it mostly happened because he had wanted to keep her safe. If she was that important to Ryan, important enough to get his head smashed in with a gun, then she belonged up there, with Seth, in Ryan's room. A part of Seth wanted to scream at Lindsay, blame her for the fact that Ryan evidently needed a tube to breathe. He wanted her in the ICU, to see the damage she had helped cause.

But he knew deep down that he wasn't thinking rationally. Lindsay wasn't to blame and neither were his parents.

Ryan just had bad luck.

So he walked into the waiting room and explained to Lindsay's mother that they would be back in a little while and he took Lindsay by the hand and put his arm around her and together they got into the elevator, and waited in silence for it to take them to see Ryan.

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End of Part 5


	6. Six Days After Christmas Part 6

Six Days After Christmas

Part 6

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The Dynamic Duo they were not.

Seth liked Lindsay, really he did. But from the minute he walked into the hospital and saw her standing there completely unscathed by tonight's violence, a mean little voice had been whispering in his head._  
_

_Why is she fine? Why is Ryan so badly hurt while she's perfectly healthy? _

He stood rigid against the elevator wall, watching the numbers slowly climb.

"I'm sorry," Lindsay told Seth quietly, and he wondered if she could sense the hostility that he was trying so hard to conceal.

_It's too late for sorry, Ryan's in the fucking ICU._

"Yeah, this is all your fault because I just know you called ahead and arranged for a mugging." Seth forced himself to smile at her. "Look. Ryan gets off on rescuing people. It's his thing. I've tried to convince him to pick up a new hobby, I don't know botany, but he doesn't listen. Just keeps jumping into the frying pan."

Lindsay didn't crack a smile.

"We should have left the beach earlier. I should have paid more attention to what time it was."

_Fuck yeah you should have. Thanks so much for watching out for Ryan for us. You did a bang up job._

"But Ryan, he just has this way, I don't know, of making you feel like nothing bad could ever happen if you're with him. And we just having such a good time talking and things were fine, until…"

"We're here." Seth rudely interrupted her.

_I don't want to hear about your happy night._

The elevator opened.

He'd never been in an ICU unit before. Was it like a club? Did he need an ID to get in?

Where was his license in case they asked him for it?

Seth patted his back pocket for his wallet, relieved when he made contact with it.

There was a small counter, kind of like the check-in at a doctor's office. But no one was manning it and Seth highly doubted that there was a bell to ring for service. He and Lindsay just stood there, waiting for someone to stumble upon them. Behind the counter, nurses in scrubs were working, typing into computers, and exchanging folders. No one paid much attention to the teenagers.

With the early hour, the hospital was dead quiet. Seth could hear beeps coming from various directions. He started to count them. When he reached seventy-eight, a woman came around the corner and asked them, "Can I help you?"

_Yes, actually. You could tell us that there has been a colossal mistake and that Ryan Atwood is actually somewhere else instead of this extremely uncomfortable place that is sending my various neuroses into overdrive._

Lindsay kept quiet, forcing Seth to take charge.

He didn't want to screw with being kept from seeing Ryan by some beaurocratic bullshit.

"Yeah, please. We're here to see my brother, Ryan Atwood."

Seth pointed to Lindsay, "This is ah, my twin." Lindsay blinked at him. He put his arm around her. "Yes, my twin and Ryan's sister, both of our sister...actually, obviously. So, we're both related to Ryan and we're both eighteen by the way, in case you were wondering. Clearly old enough to be here."

The woman looked at him skeptically. "You're twins?"

"Yes," Seth faked confidence. "Fraternal. The lack of similarity is a very touchy subject so if we could just move on," he emphasized the word very, as if he was letting the woman in on a conspiracy.

The nurse gave Seth a small laugh. "Sweetie, take it down a notch. You don't need to lie your way into Intensive Care. What do you think this is, a nightclub?"

Seth considered the question with a tilt of his head and a squint of his eyes.

"So, let's cut to the chase." The woman pointed first at Seth. "I'm guessing… good friend?" Then to Lindsay, "And…girlfriend?"

"Um, close," Seth nodded. "Impressive powers of observation and skills of deduction. But I am in fact the foster brother and she's related to me but that's way too complicated to go into, and I can't imagine why I would bother or why you would want me to, so could we please just see Ryan?"

The nurse's face softened with Seth's manic ramblings. "I'm Linda. I'm one of the nurses assigned to Ryan. You said he's your foster brother? Where are your parents?"

"They're uh, on their way up," Seth answered. "We were hoping for a little time with Ryan before things get crowded."

"Things aren't going to get crowded," Linda, informed him. "In fact things are going to stay very quiet and calm and there is never going to be more than two people at a time with Ryan because what he needs most is sleep. And we have five other patients on the floor right now, and they need sleep."

Seth wanted to remind her that Ryan was sedated but it didn't seem worth the effort.

"Can we see Ryan?" Lindsay finally spoke. "Please?"

"Let's get you signed in," Linda answered.

She went over the rules, most of which Seth classified in his head as 'worthy to be followed' or 'in need of bending'. Lindsay listened quietly, nodded every now and then. Seth tried to concentrate but nothing this lady said was going to take on any importance until he saw Ryan.

Finally she led them down a hallway. The rooms were bigger than Seth would have guessed and amazingly exposed, with doors wide open, blinds on windows pulled up. Family members of various patients glanced at the three of them as they passed by the individual rooms.

Evidently people in ICU had no need for privacy.

They stopped walking outside of a room and Seth looked at the wall. Someone had scribbled on a small piece of paper, ATWOOD, R. in black magic marker and placed it on the nameplate.

_Jesus and Moses, this is fucking real. This is really happening to Ryan._

Seth allowed himself to slowly turn his head, peek through the window.

Sure enough, there was Ryan, lying in a hospital bed.

Lots of white.

White sheets, white tubes, white pillows, white blankets.

For some strange reason, all Seth could think about was Ryan's constant wifebeaters. For a pale Caucasian boy, Ryan looked pretty damn good in white.

More white, a small lamp glowing soft light, over the head of the bed. Stupid ass place to put a light if you wanted someone to get some sleep.

Ryan's head was turned slightly, facing in the direction of the window. Seth took a deep breath, focused in on it.

Oh God, someone had cut Ryan's hair, taken a big chunk out of the side, a large white bandage where blonde should be.

Ryan was so not gonna' like that.

When he woke up.

He was going to wake up, the doctor said so.

Lindsay reached for Seth's hand, put hers in his, looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

He didn't hate her anymore and he was ashamed of himself for doing so at all.

Look at what those assholes had done to Ryan.

What would they have done to Lindsay, given enough time? Nothing physically happening to Ryan's body right now would compare to what his foster brother would have gone through, if Lindsay had been hurt, or raped or worse.

_'Come on kids,' Seth addressed his neuroses; 'we're going to take a little stroll into the land of actual crisis.'_

He could do this.

"Remember, Ryan is sedated," Linda reminded them. "He won't be able to respond to you."

With his free hand, Seth brushed his fingers through his hair. Offered, "Yeah, that's not going to be much different from our current level of interaction."

The nurse walked ahead of them, started toying with buttons on one of the machines surrounding Ryan.

Seth steered Lindsay to Ryan's bedside.

Ryan had appeared healthier through the window, less affected by violence.

But in here, close up, well, the white on white boy look really wasn't working for him tonight.

Ryan looked like he was dying.

The right side of his head was bruising, purple and crimson where the gun had hit and the bandage was failing to hide the damage. Dried blood still speckled here and there in the remaining hair. His left cheek was bruised as well.

It appeared as if someone had dragged Ryan across a road using his face as a sled.

Seth had seen Ryan bruised and bloody before. But usually there was a snarky smile or a regretful, grim frown on his face along with the injuries.

Nothing this time, in fact, despite the discoloration, Ryan looked astonishingly peaceful, as if he was just sleeping.

The breathing tube that Seth had been dreading to see, stuck out of Ryan's mouth, but it seemed natural in this setting, almost an extension of his body. The machine attached to the tube stood to the side, hissing and clicking rhythmically. It was like one of those annoying metronome things, that Seth had used to practice the piano years ago. Keeping a rhythm, setting an order and interval to Ryan's breathing.

Like Ryan was practicing with oxygen for the first time.

Several IV bags hung on a stand near the head of his bed, tubing draped across Ryan's body. Very irritating. When Ryan woke up, he'd want that crap off right away, he'd want unrestricted movement back.

Other sounds competed with the ventilator. A video display showed a steady, rapid set of blips. They chirped away like nervous ticks of a clock. Seth's eyes followed the thin, gray wires that extended from the cardiac video monitor as they disappeared under the neck of Ryan's hospital gown.

More tubing. Talk about overkill.

A thick plastic tube, with a small amount of dark red fluid, snaked along the side of the bed and emptied in to a container hanging on the bed rail.

Blood.

From Ryan's chest.

Huh.

That's never a good sign.

Ah, and yet another plastic tube.

Ryan was the Mayor of Plastic Tubing Village.

This one containing a pale yellow fluid and was secured to another receptacle at the end of the bed.

Lovely.

Seth didn't need or want to guess what orifice that particular tube called home.

And finally, a blue clothespin, or what looked like a clothespin with a small red light, was attached to Ryan's finger.

Kind of a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Clothespin.

At least it wasn't a tube.

All in all, the noise level was much louder than Seth would have imagined, considering how sick everyone was supposed to be in this place. It was all a little unnerving, at least to him, the awake person.

But, what most upset Seth was to see that Ryan's wrists were wrapped and secured to the bedrails. Were they scared of Ryan? That he might wake up and lash out and beat the hell out of someone? What had the police told them?

Seth bet the guy who cut Ryan's hair was responsible for the restraints.

He was fairly sure he was going to vomit.

Or cry.

Or both.

Seth tentatively reached out and gently traced the wrapping that tied down Ryan's right wrist, followed the cloth from the wrist to the railing.

"When you wake up Ryan," he promised his friend, "These will be the first to go."

Lindsay turned her head into Seth's chest, crying softly.

He had forgotten she was in the room.

He had to get out of this place.

"I'm sorry," she apologized.

"Shhhh," Seth soothed her, hugged her closer, rubbed her back, watched over her shoulder, at Ryan breathing in and out.

"This isn't your fault. None of this is your fault."

End of part 6


	7. Six Days After Christmas Part 7

Six Days After Christmas

(Or how we wrote a story with the sole purpose of which was to kick Ryan's ass.)

Part 7

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Sandy planned to track Seth down and put him in his place.

No holds barred, gloves off.

All out can of parental whoop-ass.

Like hell he had any intention of allowing Seth to storm off in a temper-tantrum after accusing him and Kirsten of somehow being responsible for Ryan's…situation. That attitude was not what the Cohen family needed right now. It needed to ban together, not manufacture ways to shred apart. Caleb provided enough of that drama lately, thank you very much.

Sandy gathered his momentum and went in search of his son, found him in the ICU men's room, kicking the hell out of an innocent trashcan.

One sharp "Seth!" ceased the outburst.

Seth didn't need to be put in his place. He needed his dad.

Sandy sat with him, on the floor of the bathroom until finally he asked his son, "Are you ready to go back?"

"This is so hard," Seth admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's too hard, seeing him like that. I can't cope with it."

"I'm going to help you Seth," Sandy promised. "Because if you don't go back in that room son, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

He didn't need to elaborate.

Seth understood.

Go back in the room, and be a man and stay with Ryan.

Just in case.

Go back and be thankful that you have an opportunity to help him through the hurt and help him heal. Go back now, in case there isn't another chance, in case the doctor is wrong and things aren't ok.

Sandy patted his son's knee.

"We're going to do this together Seth, as a family. We're going to help Ryan make it through this."

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Kirsten found Lindsay crying outside of Ryan's room. She walked her half-sister back to the ER waiting room, told her to go home, get some sleep, come back tomorrow and take the day shift.

Jimmy was still there, offering to help her with anything she and Sandy might need.

When he asked if he could bring Marissa in the morning, Kirsten told him to hold off on that, give her a call first.

Ryan was unconscious.

Kirsten felt uncomfortable making the decision concerning who was and was not allowed in to see him. Ryan was a very proud, private person. She doubted, given a choice, that he would even want her or Sandy or Seth seeing him incapacitated like he was.

She stopped off at the bathroom and splashed water on her face, studied her reflection in the mirror, steadied her nerves, reminded herself of what to do. This wasn't about her and how sick to her stomach she felt. This was about a seventeen-year old boy in intensive care who needed her to be his mother.

When Kirsten returned to the ICU, Sandy had sweet-talked the nurse into allowing all three of them to stay. He and Seth were already in the room, sitting in chairs, looking mutually miserable.

She kissed Ryan on the cheek, careful to avoid the breathing tube and his many bruises. Pushed the hair back from his forehead, kissed him there too.

Let her lips linger.

He felt warm and that surprised her. For some reason she expected him to be cold.

The nurse came in, asked them to leave while she completed the first neuro-check.

"Is he going to wake up Linda?" Sandy asked, hopeful.

"Not really," the nurse shook her head. "I'm just checking to see if he responds to a few, very basic commands. We don't want Ryan conscious right now. The ventilator is very uncomfortable, he'd be confused, agitated. I should only be about ten minutes."

Sandy leaned over Ryan, told him, "We're right outside the door Ryan. All of us. Me and Kirsten and Seth. We're not leaving you kid."

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Linda reviewed her notes pertaining to the young man lying in front of her.

Ryan Atwood, seventeen.

Suspected victim of a carjacking.

Only seventeen.

He'd probably been driving for less than a year.

She should be immune to this, the after affects of useless violence. After all, she'd been working in the critical care setting for many years now, and she'd seen much worse. But the young ones generally wound up in Pediatric ICU, not on her floor, and it was hard to completely remove yourself from the instant panic that swirled around nervous parents as they found themselves dealing with a critically injured child. Linda hated to play favorites, but something about this kid and his family struck her as special. She had already bent the visitor limit rule for them.

She snapped out of her thoughts and got back to the task at hand, checking out the status of the patient. Ryan's sedation should be wearing off. She'd deliberately withheld that last dose to allow him to surface a bit.

His skin color was still a bit pale, but he was slightly pinker and no longer clammy to the touch, all indications that his respiratory and circulatory statuses were improving. Linda disabled the ventilator alarms, disconnected the accompanying tubing, removed the condensation that had accumulated, and then quickly replaced the plastic tubing leading to the endotracheal tube. She glanced at the various monitors to see how well Ryan was tolerating her ministrations. The pulse ox showed an acceptable sat of 95. The cardiac monitor displayed a steady sinus tach with a rate of 135. There was minimal drainage from the chest tube, good urine output, and good bilateral pedal pulses.

All in all, considering what he'd been through tonight, he wasn't doing that badly.

Unraveling her stethoscope from around her neck, Linda auscultated Ryan's lungs. They were clear and a good exchange could be heard, with slightly diminished sounds to the right lower lobe. But there was some air moving. His lung was re-expanding.

Now, to see if the teenager would respond.

"Ryan, I'm Linda. I'm your nurse. You've been injured; you're in the hospital. If you can hear me, I want you to squeeze my hand."

"Ryan, squeeze my hand…"

"Ryan?"

After no response, Linda moved on. She shook the teen's arm. Ryan moved his head slightly - good sign. She tried one more time, "Ryan, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand Ryan".

Linda was rewarded with a slight feeling of pressure. "That's great Ryan. You're in the hospital. My name's Linda and I'm going to take very good care of you. You have a tube in your throat to help you breathe, so you can't talk right now. I know it's uncomfortable, but you're doing really well Ryan and I'm going to make sure you stay as comfortable as possible."

Picking up her penlight, she warned, "Ryan, I'm going to shine a bright light in your eyes," and proceeded with the neuro checks.

Finally, Linda assessed Ryan's abdomen, continuing her narration, talking to him in hopes that her voice would be calming. The bruising on his stomach continued to deepen and his abdomen was feeling a bit tight to the touch. She measured the circumference and noted all of her findings on the flowsheet at the foot of the bed.

Something didn't feel right, but Linda couldn't quite put her finger on any one thing in particular. All the readings look good. She wondered if it was simply the patient's age that had her feeling slightly uneasy, slightly uncertain.

Ryan's head shifted again and he started straining against the ventilator. His left hand reflexively rose up, pulling against the soft restraint on his wrist. Linda murmured soothing words while she administered the much-needed sedation that would return Ryan to an unconscious state. Once she was finished, the nurse freshened up his linens, straightened up the bedside, and then stepped out to invite the teenager's anxious family back in.

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Seth leaned against the waiting room wall face first, gently thumping his forehead against the wall.

One thump for each word.

"This… is… taking… a… long… time," he announced, turned to his father, "Do you think this is taking too long?"

Sandy blew air out of his cheeks, held out a hand to answer, "Well I'm sure…."

"So you think so too, huh?" Seth interrupted. "Mom. Dad and I think it's taking too long."

"I'm sure everything is fine Seth," Kirsten answered wearily.

Seth manically nodded up and down, folded his arms around his midsection, "So it's unanimous. We all agree it's taking too long and therefore something horrible must be happening."

The nurse, Linda, entered the waiting room and Seth immediately jumped at her, "How'd he do? Did he pass?"

"Ryan did fine," Linda smiled. "He's resting again. It wasn't really a test."

"Did he wake up?" Sandy inquired. "Does he know where he is? Did you tell him we were here?"

"Ryan was able to follow a few verbal requests Mr. Cohen, just enough to let us know that the head injury doesn't appear to be complicating things. Everything went well. I told him his family was here. In most likelihood, your son really won't start comprehending or remembering what is happening to him until after the ventilator is removed. The sedative we are administering causes most patients to have a foggy recollection at best."

"Well, that's probably for the better," Sandy muttered, ran his fingers through his hair. "I mean who in the hell would want to remember any of this?"

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"We're back," Kirsten told Ryan as she pulled a chair close to his bed. "The nurse said you're doing really good. I sent Lindsay home. She's fine. You protected her Ryan. You kept her safe. I'm so grateful to you."

Seth grabbed another chair, a little further from the bed.

Sandy stayed on his feet.

Listened to his wife softly talking to Ryan, thankful that for once he didn't have to be the strong one.

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Seth glanced at his watch. An hour and a half had passed. He must have fallen asleep. He stretched his neck, leaning side to side. The hospital chair wasn't bad but it was no bed.

His stomach growled.

He was a horrible friend, a horrible brother. Ryan was laying here with a tube shoved down his throat and all Seth could think about was food.

Shouldn't he be telling people he wasn't hungry? Shouldn't food be inconsequential? People on TV were always skipping meals when catastrophe struck.

His dad had set up camp next to his mom who remained resolutely next to Ryan's bedside. They were holding hands, his mom's head on his dad's shoulder. He spent a second watching them, not remembering the last time he had seen them like this, this close. Seth stood up, joined his parents, nodded toward Ryan, asked his father, "How's he doing?"

"Sleeping," Sandy answered. "Soundly."

"Yes, thank you Father. Let's not allow this current, tragic set of circumstances to derail your acerbic wit."

"Sorry," Sandy apologized. "But honest to God, he hasn't even twitched."

Seth's stomach groaned louder, causing his father to inquire, "Hungry there sport?"

Seth scratched unconsciously at his cheek, grimaced, "Yeah maybe a little bit. Does that make me a bad person?"

"No," Sandy shook his head, "Just a hungry one."

He handed Seth several ones, "Go grab something, I'm sure there are vending machines around. Get your mother a bottle of water."

Seth started to leave the room but hesitated.

Sure, he was in Ryan's room, instead of running as far away from the hospital as humanly possible.

That was a start.

But he was letting his parents do all the talking, as if Ryan was a museum piece that Seth was being informed of while he stood a few feet away, detached, examining it.

He walked slowly to the other side of Ryan's bed. He preferred the left side, no bandage. No hideous bald spot. Fewer tubes.

Seth cleared his throat. Leaned down.

"Hey man, I'm uh, just gonna' step out and grab something to munch," he clumsily told his friend. "So…yeah, so, I'll be right back."

His dad gave him a quick bob and a small smile as he exited.

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Linda entered Ryan's room, noting that his parents were the only ones in it. Both their heads snapped up, looking at her, watching her with wariness. She hated the way her presence always shifted the mood of a room, from calm to awkward.

She'd learned not to take it personally.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cohen, it's time for Ryan's next neuro-check. The coffee cart on the third floor should be open by now, if you want to stretch your legs."

"It's a little early, isn't it?" Mr. Cohen asked, glanced at his watch, "for another check?"

"There's no set time," Linda maintained a cheerful veneer. "It shouldn't take too long. I'll come and find you in the lounge as soon as I am done."

The couple stood up, said goodbye to their son, politely excused themselves.

Not son, Linda reminded herself.

The paperwork noted that Ryan was their foster son, not biological. That explained the differences in the last names. But earlier, in the waiting room, she had referred to Ryan as their son and no one had even blinked, let alone made an attempt to correct her. He must have been living with them a long time.

Linda pulled the blinds in the hospital room shut in case one of the Cohens came back early. She was concerned about Ryan's recent blood pressure reading. It wasn't a significant drop, but when combined by her earlier misgivings, Linda's radar was at full alert.

She began the exam in the usual fashion.

"Ryan…"

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Seth returned from his vending machine safari chewing on a Snickers. He would have preferred a Twix, which for some reason he considered more of a food group, but it was best for beggars not to be choosers at five in the morning.

Noticing that Ryan's blinds and door were shut, he detoured straight for the small ICU waiting room.

"Everything cool?" he asked, more as an introduction to his return than an actual question.

"Yes," he mother answered quickly.

"No," his dad countered.

"Sandy, come on," Kirsten urged, "Stop it, you'll worry Seth."

"Worry Seth about what?" Seth asked, eyeballing both his parents.

"Nothing," Sandy said quietly, turned his head away from his son.

Seth avoided his mother, went straight for his father. "Worry Seth about what?" he repeated.

"Your father's being paranoid honey."

"I'm pretty sure I wasn't talking to you Mom."

Silence.

"Hey," Seth complained, "If this is what it's going to be like every time I go for a candy bar or a soda or a pee, I'm not leaving the room anymore. If something's going on, I have a right to know."

Sandy stood up, "Your mother's right, it's probably nothing. I'm probably overreacting."

"See, Dad, it's the overreacting to _what_ that has me so confused and feeling left out."

"It's just," Sandy hesitated, "The nurse came in to Ryan's room early for that check and now it's taking longer than before."

"They're just being thorough," Kirsten offered. "The doctor told us he's doing fine."

"That was hours ago, Kirsten," Sandy reminded her. "He also warned us that something could go wrong."

"Well how long has it been?" Seth asked, his anxiety growing. How long had he been away, searching for food? How long had he left Ryan alone, in this place, in that room? He observed his father pacing, his face serious. "Dad, how long has it been?"

"Thirty-five minutes," Sandy rapid-fired. "It only took ten minutes last time."

Kirsten bit her bottom lip, avoided Seth's stare.

"I'm going to go find out what's taking so long," Sandy declared.

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Linda reviewed the lab results again, compared them to the previous ones. Between Ryan's most-recent exam and the new findings, she knew something wasn't right. The kid had to be bleeding out from somewhere and her money was on the belly. His abdomen had felt a bit tight and he had jerked slightly when she was examining his right side.

It was time to call in the troops for a more thorough check.

She gathered her notes and paged the Surgery Resident. Linda needed to get someone to take a look at this kid quickly, either to confirm her suspicions or put them to rest.

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Dr. Morrison was in his third year and almost finished with his residency. He couldn't wait to get off of the ridiculous 36-hour shift rotations. How the medical profession could consider sleep deprivation ideal training ground was beyond him. He was counting the days until this forced servitude was over, and he could begin to practice medicine in a more civilized manner, during more civilized hours.

The beeper woke him from a light sleep.

More like a light nap.

Morrison hadn't been lying down for more than thirty minutes since his last call. He considered for a nano-second ignoring the page, but that thought was absurd and definitely the lack of meaningful sleep talking. He sighed, glimpsed at the callback number on the pager's display, then quickly got up and placed a return call to ICU.

There were plenty of nurses who paged him for no good reason.

Linda wasn't one of them.

So, when he returned the page and listened to Linda describing the condition of her patient, he didn't hesitate to haul ass to the ICU and assess the situation for himself.

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Sandy peeked into Ryan's room, saw the nurse hanging up the room phone, withdrew his head, waited by the door.

Counted to ten.

Told himself to stay calm and rational.

He was the amateur investigator, the one that never jumped to conclusions without analyzing the leads.

The nurse came out, almost running into him, surprised by his presence.

"Oh, Mr. Cohen," she said briskly, " I'm not done with Ryan's exam. You need to go into the waiting room sir. I'll be there as soon as I can to give you an update."

Sandy tried to keep his voice steady, tried to ignore the nurse's change in tone and body language. "Is everything all right Linda?"

Use her first name, force her to treat you like a human being, don't allow her to blow you off.

"Sir, you really need to return to the waiting room. One of the rules we discussed earlier this evening is how important it is to Ryan's recovery that you and your family follow every and all instructions presented to you by the ICU staff."

Ouch.

Nurse one, him nothing.

Sandy recognized a verbal slap down when he was administered one. He considered arguing, but so far she had been lenient with him. If everything was all right, he didn't want to risk falling out of her good graces. He began a reluctant retreat back to the waiting room.

"Linda."

"Dr. Morrison."

Sandy heard the nurse's name called. He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a large, well-built guy in a white lab coat and blue scrubs hustle his way into Ryan's room.

Sandy turned around and stared at the nurse, his eyes willing her to tell him what in the hell was going.

"Just a few more minutes Mr. Cohen," was all she said before joining the doctor in the hospital room.

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After a hasty, but complete exam of Ryan, Dr. Morrison put into motion a flurry of activity.

First, he called Dr. Caulard to report his findings and plot a plan of action.

Next, he contacted the OR to secure a surgical suite and to begin the on-call process for assembling the required members of a surgical staff.

That was the easy part, the resident told himself. Linda had warned him about the hovering family. If medicine were all cutting and drilling, it'd be a piece of cake. It was the damn PR that was going to be the death of him. Morrison practiced his speech as he walked slowly to the waiting room to locate the Cohens and discuss the most recent development in their son's case.

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Linda prepped Ryan for an immediate transport to surgery. Dr. Morrison had toyed with ordering another CT Scan but Ryan's condition was deteriorating too quickly to risk the time it would take to run the test. He wanted the teenager in surgery now.

"Ryan, it's Linda. I'm not sure how much of this you're following but we're taking a little ride down to surgery. I'm going to be doing a few things to help get you ready."

She attached Ryan to a portable cardiac monitoring device, hung two new bags of IV fluids, including a piggyback of antibiotics, and paged Respiratory to assist with the transport, all the while talking to Ryan, explaining to him what was going on, assuring him he would be fine.

_Always assume the patient can hear you; always assume they might be aware of something._

Linda worked quickly, focusing on what needed to be done, fueled by the sense of urgency created by Ryan's declining stats. His heart rate was racing, blood pressure dropping.

The respiratory specialist arrived and Linda let out a silent sigh of relief, unconsciously patting Ryan on the head as he was whisked away.

Thank god she had called Morrison without delay, instead of wasting time second-guessing herself.

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"How can this just now be happening?" Sandy questioned. "How can you just now be finding this? We were told by the other doctor that Ryan was stable."

"He is stable," Morrison answered. "We need to locate the bleed and eliminate it to keep him that way. I understand that this is a little bit disappointing but we've caught the bleeding early and I don't anticipate any further complications."

"Disappointing?" Sandy blinked disbelievingly at the doctor. "Disappointing? How about scary or terrifying? How about explaining to me why we shouldn't be panicking that Ryan is bleeding internally and has most likely been doing so since the moment he was admitted into this hospital?"

Morrison held out his hands. "Look, Mr. Cohen, we ran every single test possible. Sometimes these things just take their time presenting. It's fortunate that Ryan displayed classic, easy to recognize indicators and didn't experience a sudden drop in blood pressure. If we have to cross this bridge, believe me Sir, this is the way we want to do it."

"I'm pretty damn uncomfortable that it's taken you and your staff this long to find 'the bridge'," Sandy snipped. "All that damn machinery you have Ryan hooked up to and this is the best you people can do?"

"Sandy," Kirsten put a hand on his shoulder, "This isn't helping honey. This isn't what Ryan needs right now." She turned to the doctor. "How long…will the surgery take?"

Morrison nodded, happy to be back on familiar ground. "A few hours, maybe a little less, depending on what we find."

Sandy started to open his mouth again, but Kirsten applied pressure to his clavicle, effectively silencing him.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Morrison quickly explained the consent forms, obtained the Cohens' signatures, and high-tailed it out of the waiting room.

Sandy slunk into a chair, putting his head into his hands.

Kirsten knelt down on one knee, put her hands over his, whispering to him.

Seth stood numb in the middle of the room.

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End of part 7


	8. Six Days After Christmas Part 8

Six Days After Christmas

Part 8

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Jimmy Cooper sat in his car, his engine running, sipping a Grande Mocha.

Just casually sipping a cup of hot java, in the driveway…of the Cooper-Nichol estate.

He hadn't been to bed tonight, hell this morning.

All he could think about was his teenage daughter and how she would react if she found out he had known about Ryan Atwood and failed to tell her. Marissa was so emotionally removed from her mother right now, it wasn't even satisfying to him. As much as he blamed Julie for the breakup of their family, he hated the continually growing rift between his ex-wife and oldest daughter. He felt bad, dismissing his promise to Kirsten, but Julie and he couldn't afford for Marissa to be mad at him.

He was the only parent she was still talking to.

Besides, even if Marissa went to the hospital, that didn't mean the Cohens had to let her in to see Ryan. They could certainly screen the teenager's visitors.

Jimmy set down his coffee, gathered his mental strength and prepared to enter the lion's den.

Or more specifically the lioness's den.

Sure he and Julie had been doing the horizontal mambo lately, and while he was confident nobody knew about it, Julie was gonna' freak when he showed up out of nowhere, at her new house, at five-thirty in the morning.

He'd have to talk fast.

Jimmy rang the doorbell, heard it echo through the vast palace that Julie pretended was a home.

The door flung open after the fourth round of rings.

"Jimmy!"

Angry.

Oh great. Good morning Jules. He was almost hoping for Caleb.

"What the hell are you doing here?" She hissed under her breath.

"I came to see Marissa, Julie. It's important."

Julie cocked her head, squinted her eyes. "Is everything ok, Jimmy?" she asked carefully.

"No," he answered, stepping through the threshold. "It isn't."

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There was a phone ringing in Summer's dream and that really pissed her off.

It wouldn't stop ringing and that pissed her off even more.

What the hell?

She groped for and found an alarm clock.

5:47 a.m. Where was the damn phone? She grabbed it. Marissa's number shined out in the dark.

"Coop?" She half asked, half shouted. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Yes," Marissa blew off Summer's obvious irritation. "Sum, there's been an accident."

Summer sat straight up in bed. "Are you ok Coop? God, tell me you weren't drinking."

"No, no, it's not like that," Marissa answered. "It's Ryan."

"What about Ryan?" Summer asked, shook her head trying to clear it.

"He's at HOAG. My dad was there, last night, with the Cohens. It's bad Sum. He's in Intensive Care."

"What?" Summer struggled to follow the conversation.

Marissa started crying. "Can you please just come get me Summer? I want to go see him. My dad offered to take me, but I'd rather go with you."

"Yeah, yeah of course Coop," Summer readily agreed. "Give me like five minutes to brush my teeth and update the step-monster. I'll be there in like fifteen minutes."

"Ok," Marissa sputtered, "You're going to hurry, right?"

"Absolutely," Summer soothed, tried to keep her best friend calm. "Coop, listen, this is Chino we're talking about. He's like Mr. All Tough and Shit. I'm sure your dad is just exaggerating."

"I don't think so Summer," Marissa's voice hitched. "Just please hurry, ok?"

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Kirsten cleared her throat, tried to find her voice.

She needed to take charge.

Seth was refusing to look at anyone.

Sandy was as close to a mess as he ever allowed himself to be, staring at the wall, so still he could be mistaken for a mannequin.

Kirsten was reminded of the day after Sophie left, the only time Sandy had allowed himself to process his mother's illness in front of a witness. They had sat together outside, by the pool, holding hands.

Quiet, still.

That was Sandy's version of anxious.

It unnerved Kirsten more than any overt display of energy could possibly.

"Guys," she attempted to coax a response from at least one of them. "The uh, the surgeon said it was going to be awhile before…Ryan is done. We really should go grab a bite to eat. We should do it now, while we have time."

"I'm not hungry," Seth grumbled. "You two go."

"I'd feel better if you came with us Seth," Kirsten said gently.

"Well, that's too bad Mom, 'cause I'm relatively sure I'd feel better if I didn't."

He looked up at her, his eyes apologetic.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I just really don't want to leave this room right now."

"Ok," Kirsten conceded, pulled at her husband's arm. "Come on Sandy. Let's go. You need to eat something."

He nodded, actually went with her, as if, unlike Seth, he lacked the energy to argue.

"Seth," Sandy finally spoke, "If anything…happens, if they need to find us for any reason, you'll tell them where we are?"

"Yeah, yeah of course," Seth answered. "Cafeteria. Got it."

And just like that, he was alone in the waiting room.

He sat in silence for a few minutes.

Ryan was in surgery.

The shit hitting the fan, previously described as serious, had now reached critical mass.

Ryan was in big trouble. Ryan was being carved up like a Christmas ham.

God, what was wrong with him, making that comparison. He was a sicko. He was like one step away from having the middle name Wayne.

He was Jewish for god's sake. He shouldn't be combining life saving procedures and pork products.

_Deep breaths Seth. _He encouraged himself, _Happy, non-surgery thoughts._

He wanted to keep his eyes open, figure out a way not to have to blink. Every time his eyes flashed shut, he saw Ryan, in that fucking bed, with that fucking bald spot and those goddamn tubes.

Seth swallowed, breathed heavily, trying to keep his emotions in tact.

His cell phone rang. He glanced at it, assuming it was Lindsay.

Who else would be calling?

Summer.

Summer?

His ex-girlfriend's number was highlighted in red. She had to have found out about Ryan. There was no other reason for her to call him this early in the morning, not anymore, not since he sailed away.

Seth stared at the phone, finally flipping it open.

Wait.

What about hospitals and cell phones? Maybe, with the mere act of flipping the phone open, he had killed some old guy in the room next to Ryan's.

God, it was official now. His middle name should be Wayne.

He managed to say hello.

"Cohen! Crap, what the hell is going on? Coop just called me; she's a babbling mess. I'm on my way over to her house to pick her up, something about Ryan being in an accident? Can we come to the hospital? Is it ok with your parents? Is Ryan ok? He's ok, right? Cohen? Cohen, are you there? Answers Cohen. Answers would be nice."

"Um," Seth's voice cracked. The phone slipped down to his thigh. He could still hear her barking at him.

A muffled, "Cohen?" Then a calmer, clearer, slower, "Seth?"

She called him Seth.

He wanted her to be here, with him, so bad. Summer was always the stronger one in the relationship. He wanted her to burst thought the waiting room doors and take over. Tell him how to act, how to behave.

How to stay calm, how to stay focused for Ryan and not lose himself in his own fabricated and real fears.

He put the phone back up to his ear.

She had changed tactics, from aggressive to comforting.

"Seth. Are you there? Is it serous? Is Ryan actually hurt?"

"Yes," he said softly. He was losing it big time. He could deal with her anger, but Summer's sympathy was eating at his resolve. "It's um. He's um. They just took him into emergency surgery. I'm...it's confusing. Something about a collapsed lung and internal bleeding."

"Ok," Summer's voice was no nonsense. "Listen to me Cohen, Marissa and I are on our way right now. Where are you?"

He told her, his forearm over his eyes, big gulps of air.

Fuck. He was starting to cry. He should hang up on her before she realized it.

"My dad's a doctor, Cohen. I'm telling you, people have surgery for this kind of shit all the time. Ryan's going to be fine, ok? Marissa and I are on our way. Just wait there for us, ok Seth?"

He nodded, tears rolling down his face now, somehow knowing she'd understand, despite the lack of a verbal response.

Before he flipped the phone shut, Seth heard a final, "I coming, just wait for me Cohen."

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Sandy pushed a bagel across his plate.

He wasn't hungry. He wasn't thirsty. He wasn't tired.

He was scared as hell for Ryan.

Seth was right.

They should never have left him alone.

He was still a child for God's sake. No parenting book would ever approve of leaving a seventeen year old alone for four days. The whole world knew that it was asking for trouble. He and Kirsten were always insisting that Ryan relax and be a kid. But did they ever, really, start treating him like one?

"I have to get a hold of Dawn," Sandy relayed his thoughts to Kirsten. "This has gone too far. Before, when we thought it was just the ribs, and the lung was getting better, and Ryan's concussion seemed under control, I figured I'd wait until this afternoon, when things had calmed down. But with this latest development, I can't make the decision that she shouldn't be included. I won't be responsible for making that decision." He stopped rambling, asked Kirsten, "What should I do? Would Ryan want her here?"

Kirsten stirred her tea, listened to the spoon clang against the side of the cup. Dawn should be called. She was Ryan's mother. A year and a half, no matter how positive, no matter how mutually productive, could wipe the slate clean of sixteen years. Ryan and his mother were once a family. Dawn had left her son with them for a myriad of reasons, some of them certainly selfish. But mostly, Kirsten believed in the very depths of her heart, mostly Dawn had abandoned Ryan in Newport, because she loved him.

Wanted more for him than she was capable of giving.

"Call her Sandy," Kirsten answered. " She's still his mother. Dawn should be here."

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"Coop, you have to get it together. I mean it. I'm not taking you to see the Cohens with you all mucusy and stuff."

They stopped at a restroom on the lower level. Marissa blew her nose, threw water on her face.

"Seriously Coop, if we are going up there, we need to be like completely in control of ourselves. Sandy and Kirsten don't need a bunch of weepy and clingy teenagers. I'm sure they have enough problems they're dealing with."

Marissa nodded. "You're right, you're right. I'm ok."

"And besides," Summer lightly hit Marissa on the shoulder, "We don't even know for sure what's happening with Ryan." She rolled her eyes, "Cohen is so dramatic. Chino could be perfectly fine for all we know."

Marissa blinked at her, big blue eyes studying Summer, wanting to believe her optimistic prognosis.

"Really?"

"Hell yeah! Trust me Coop, we're going to all be laughing about this in a few hours. I mean, come on," Summer kicked up a pink, furry, slipper clad foot. "Hello….still have slippers on here."

Marissa let out a tension-filled laugh, wiped her eyes one last time.

"I love you Sum."

"Love you too Coop. Now let's go see what those two idiots have gotten themselves into."

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Ken Morrison swiped the cap off his head as he left the surgical suite and strode down to the OR desk to write the post-op orders.

What a bloody mess that kid's belly was. That lacerated liver was oozing like a bitch. Fortunately, the organ damage wasn't really severe, just nasty. An hour and a half of patching the pulpy organ and the patient was now off to Recovery. Another day or two in ICU and he should be good to go. At least as far as the abdomen was concerned.

Now, to clean up and then explain everything to the understandably worried family.

It was always a relief to be able to deliver news when it's good, much easier than informing parents that their child needs emergency surgery. And this time, thankfully, it was positive news. The kid was young and strong. Morrison guessed the teenager should recuperate without further complications.

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"The number is out of service," Sandy snapped his phone shut in frustration. "She promised me she would call me if she ever changed numbers."

"Do you have an address?" Kirsten asked hopefully.

"Who knows?" Sandy shrugged. "I do, but it's over a year old. I could contact Social Services, but I doubt that they have any new information. If they did, Ryan's social worker is supposed to forward it to me. This is basically my fault, for not keeping better track of her. I should have anticipated a need in the future to talk to Dawn for something. But instead, I don't know, it was just easier to almost…"

"Forget she existed," Kirsten finished the sentence.

"Yeah," Sandy nodded, "that sounds awful, I know."

"No it doesn't," Kirsten disagreed. "I think Ryan does the same thing. I think it's easier on him and all of us know it, so we just ignore Dawn's existence along with Ryan."

"Yeah, well, be that as it may, we have a moral obligation to both Dawn and Ryan to let her know what's going on with him. I'll call that guy that found Dawn for me last year, maybe he'll get lucky again."

Sandy glanced at his watch. "We should head back up," He paused, ran his fingers through his hair, "in case Ryan gets done early."

Kirsten took Sandy's free hand, "He's going to be okay honey."

"I know," Sandy lowered his head, "It's just the getting to the okay that's the hard part. We are officially done bringing children into the Cohen house. I gotta' tell ya' honey, these two are killing me."

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Summer conned her and Marissa's way into the ICU waiting room.

"Cousins?" The nurse asked skeptically.

"Kissing," Summer answered, not waiting for a response, signing the ICU log sheet for both her and Marissa.

"Come on cousin Coop."

The two girls located the waiting room and Summer peeked in. Seth was alone, curled up in a chair.

"It's just Cohen," she told her friend. "Give me a second."

Summer slipped in.

Seth noticed right away.

Quickly wiping a sweatshirt-covered forearm across his eyes, he sat up strait, averted his eyes, "Hey Summer. You uh, you guys got here like warp speed." Seth glanced around Summer's body, squinted, "I uh, I thought you said Marissa was coming with you."

"She was, she is," Summer pointed a thumb in the direction of the hallway, "She's uh, I asked Coop to wait a sec. I wanted to talk to you, alone, a minute."

Seth sat up straighter. "Yeah, of course. What do you want to talk about?"

Summer stared at him and Seth squirmed in his chair, nodded his head. "About what an idiot I am for even having to ask. Ryan."

"Uh, yeah." Summer bobbed her head up and down, "Ryan. What in the hell exactly happened?"

"Um, abbreviated version?" Seth grimaced. "I prefer that one, 'cause the long version involves graphic violence. So, Lindsay, Ryan, date, sort-of, dinner, fun chit-chat, getting late, walk to car, mugging, fight, gun…" Seth abruptly stopped, took a deep breath.

"Uh, where was I. Oh, right. Gun…to Ryan's head, then against Ryan's head, as in hit…against, followed by evidently a Beckham style kicking drill to the stomach…which brings us to ICU and currently emergency surgery."

Summer cringed, bit her upper lip.

"Oh," Seth pretend perked, twirled a finger in the air, "Did I mention that all this took place while my father and I were being held captive at my mom's lame friend's house in RPV?"

"Yeah," Seth nodded "It's been one hell of a winter vacation. But hey, I don't need to tell you that, you were there for my grandpa's unveiling. So how's the rest of your vacation working out for you? Pedicure, manicure, Zachacure?"

"Seth."

"I'm sure, that you know, you're keeping busy. Thanks, by the way for coming over. It's uh, really a nice gesture, and completely unnecessary. But I'm sure Ryan, will be flattered, well, not that he actually gets flattered, I'm not really sure, he's uh, got like three facial reactions and two of them involve being arrested."

"Cohen!"

Summer walked over to him.

"Just," Summer blew out a breath, "Just stop and breathe and…." She looked around the room. "And get me a chair. A comfortable one. I'm staying for a while."

Seth nodded.

"I'm going to go get Coop. Just breathe Cohen."

Marissa came in, gave Seth a shy smile, a small wave. "Is this weird, me being here?" She asked quietly. "I just, I heard what happened and I … I really needed to be here."

"Weird?" Seth asked as he rearranged the furniture. "Um, I don't know. Weirder than the fact that we're now related or that Ryan is dating my half-aunt?"

Marissa helped him slide a chair over, "Yeah, I see what you mean."

Seth glanced around the small waiting room. "Not weird so much as…crowded."

"Where are your parents Cohen?" Summer asked, settling in to a cushy chair, folding her legs under her butt. "I figured they'd be camped out."

"Uh, eating actually. They um, thought that they better do it while they had a chance, 'cause once Ryan comes back from surgery…"

His voice trailed off.

"Come sit by me Cohen," Summer patted the chair next to her. "We need to develop a Chino recuperation plan."

Seth stared at her.

Summer held out her hands, "I mean Ryan's gonna' have like all kinds of time sitting around at home and if he's anything like my step-monster after her boob job, he's going to need constant entertainment. We can't have him sitting in the pool house, alone, brooding all day. So, let's make a list of movies or whatever and when Marissa and I get done here, we'll go and make a 'Welcome Home Chino' pack. Ok?"

Seth shifted his weight, picked at his cuticles, "Um, he may be here…for a while. There's other stuff wrong with him. They were talking days before the surgery, but now, I don't even know how long he'll be stuck here."

Summer considered the comment for a second before adding, "Ok, no problem. We'll make two recoup packs, one just for the hospital. He'll want toothpaste, 'cause hospital toothpaste is just icky, and a toothbrush, I mean…that goes without saying. Oh, and gum, 'cause even if he can't really eat anything right away, maybe he can have some gum. I always gave away a whole lot of gum in my striping days. Does Ryan even chew gum?"

"No," Marissa piped in, "At least, I've never seen him chew it."

The girls starting chatting back and forth, first debating over what type of gum Ryan would chew if forced to, and then, moved on to the actual impact of gum chewing on jaw alignment.

Seth listened to the babbling, finding it surprisingly relaxing. He tried to stifle a yawn, gave up, and let a huge one out.

In the old days, he'd used Summer's shoulder as a pillow.

Summer glimpsed at him, kept talking, stood up, took his hand, led him over to a small loveseat.

Seth sat down wearily, not sure what to do.

"Sleep Cohen," Summer commanded. "I'll wake you up when there's news."

She was just being nice, just being a friend.

He knew the difference now; he knew where their relationship stood, or didn't stand, or whatever.

He laid his head in her lap, manipulated his lanky legs so that he was comfortable in the limited space.

Summer and Marissa's discussion moved from gum to the _The Valley_. Evidently the Christmas episode had been particularly action packed.

Whatever.

He was so tired.

Summer started absent-mindedly stroking his hair, playing with individual curls, just like she used to.

Seth yawned again, closed his eyes. With Summer here, the images of Ryan in the ICU were replaced by happier times, him and Ryan, on the Summer Breeze, sailing in the afternoon sun.

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Linda assisted in the process of transferring all of the medical equipment attached to Ryan back to the various wall outlets, devices, and IV poles.

"Morrison will be up in a minute to talk to the parents," the anesthesiologist, Dr. Wilson, told her. "He may be an asshole in the people department, but the guy can cut. He's fast as hell."

Linda nodded, watched as her colleague detached the ambu bag and connected Ryan to the vent. The boy reacted to the changes in pressures and rhythm, shifting his head slightly.

"Good," Dr. Wilson observed. "He wasn't giving me much to work with in Recovery so I held off on the sedation. I was beginning to worry that the head trauma was coming back to bite us in the ass."

"Ryan?" Linda leaned in close, "Can you open your eyes for me?"

The anesthesiologist raised his voice, going for the opposite approach than the mothering Linda, in a deep baritone instructed, "Ryan Atwood, open you eyes."

Just like that, Ryan's eyes snapped open.

Dr Wilson smiled smugly, "Ha. Works every time."

Linda concentrated on Ryan, positioning her face so that Ryan could zero in on her. His eyes flittered around frantically, failing to focus in on any one thing.

"Slow down your breathing Ryan," Wilson commented from above, fidgeting with the settings and alarm buttons on the vent.

Linda shook her head.

Doctors.

Jesus, the kid had just woken up. Maybe Wilson could wait ten seconds before he began barking orders at the patient.

"Hey, Ryan," Linda gently moved Ryan's head slightly, trying to help the teenager focus on her, "I'm Linda, your nurse. You're in the hospital. You've been in an accident Ryan; I don't know how much you remember from when you met me earlier. I'm guessing from the look in your eyes, not much."

His chest still heaving, Ryan's eyes locked with Linda's.

The teenager appeared terrified and suspicious all at the same time and Linda didn't blame him one bit. She smiled at him, "Hey. Hi there. Do you understand what I'm telling you Ryan? You've been in an accident but you're doing fine. You're on a ventilator to help you breathe Ryan, but it's just a precaution. A very uncomfortable precaution, I know that. Let the machine do the work for you, just go with it."

Ryan dug the side of his head into his pillow, his wrists testing the restraints.

"Calm down," Wilson instructed sharply. "You're not going anywhere."

Ryan's eyes shifted immediately to the man with the booming voice hovering over his head. He couldn't figure out why this man was angry with him, yelling at him. What the hell did he do wrong this time?

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Linda suppressed a laugh. If eyes alone could tell someone to go to hell, Wilson would be burning. She couldn't do much about Wilson's demeanor; he could be just as insensitive as Morrison. Instead she asked him, "He's all set, right?"

"As long as his breathing evens out."

Linda winked at Ryan, "It will. Can you do me a favor and go get his parents? Dr. Morrison should have briefed them by now. They should be in the waiting room down the hall, last name is Cohen." She turned her attention back to Ryan.

"What do you say Ryan, calm down, don't fight the vent, and we'll get Mr. And Mrs. Cohen in here to see you. They've been here, with you, the whole time Ryan. They're going to be so relieved to see you awake. Can you do that for them? Stay calm so they can see you?"

Linda watched the numbers on the vent's monitor regulate.

She tapped Ryan's upper arm. "That's it. That's perfect. Now what do you say you and I get a few things done while we wait?"

She began a cursory exam of his eyes, making sure he could track her movements with both. The penlight caused an immediate reaction; Ryan's eyes clamping shut, turning his head, trying to escape the intrusion.

"I imagine that head is hurting, huh?" Linda asked sympathetically. "Sorry."

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_Oh God, fucking light hurts like a son of a bitch._

Ryan's senses rushed back at him. The grogginess was still winning out over everything else, but disjointed thoughts were beginning to break through the haze.

Hospital.

Something wasn't letting him breathe properly.

He vaguely recalled the sensation of not being able to breathe at all.

Pain.

But not really pain, more like a toothache when it first starts, a throbbing and gnawing with the promise of pain to follow.

"Ryan, open up your eyes. Try and stay awake."

That lady was talking to him.

He cautiously opened his eyes, concerned that it took so long just to manage the task.

He took a deep breath and more air than he was counting on rushed into his lungs, causing him to choke. He heard foreign sounds, like buzzers and bells on a pinball machine, going off right near his ears.

He looked at the woman with desperation. Certainly she could see that this thing down his throat was killing him.

"Hey, it's ok, you're working with a ventilator, remember. Just try and relax."

_What the fuck had happened to him?_

His eyes drooped shut. He felt the woman lifting up the blankets that were covering him, cold air rushed in, her fingertips gentle, gingerly pushing on his stomach.

His chest felt like a millions pounds were resting on it.

Ryan knew he was supposed to stay awake but he couldn't remember why.

It was easier to breathe if that was all he thought about, so he kept his eyes shut and listened to the unfamiliar sounds that surrounded him.

Beeps, one after the other. He felt himself drifting in rhythm to them. Somewhere mixed in with the beeps, someone was calling his name.

"Ryan…Ryan…"

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Sandy and Kirsten entered the waiting room expecting to find their son. Instead, Marissa and Summer stared at them, Seth curled up asleep, his head on Summer's lap.

"Um, hi, girls," Kirsten said uneasily. "This is a is uh, a surprise. Did Seth call you?"

"No," Marissa stood up, "Actually my dad told me about Ryan and I sort of dragged Summer here. We don't want to be in the way. We can uh, go wait somewhere else," Marissa looked at Kirsten apologetically, "if you guys want us to."

"No, no of course not," Sandy shook his head, "It's just that we weren't expecting visitors so soon. Ryan is um..."

"In surgery," Summer spoke up, "Seth told us."

The awkward moment was cut short by the entrance of a man in scrubs. Sandy and Kirsten recognized Dr. Morrison and stood to join him.

The doctor seemed to prefer the standing position. He crossed his arms and looked at both of them, stating, "Ryan did fine; he's being transferred back to ICU as we speak. He tolerated the surgery well and we were able to stop the abdominal bleeding. He had several small nicks in his liver that we patched but I don't foresee him having any long-term effects or problems. Recovery from this type of surgery can be painful, but we'll keep him comfortable. Kids tend to bounce back a whole lot sooner than we would. As soon as we get Ryan settled, you'll be able to go in and see him. I'll be consulting with Ryan's attending physician, but I'm confident he won't be requiring any more of my services. I wish you luck with your son's recuperation."

With that, Dr. Morrison exited the waiting room as quickly as he entered, leaving Sandy and Kirsten feeling stunned yet elated. Sandy hadn't even had a chance to fire off any questions.

Shortly after Dr. Morrison left, another man in scrubs entered the waiting room, his manner just as succinct. "Mr. and Mrs. Cohen? My name is Doctor Wilson, I'm the anesthesiologist who assisted with Ryan's surgery. He's waking up from the anesthesia, if you'd like to come and say a quick hello. I can't promise how long he'll remain conscious."

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Sandy grabbed Kirsten's hand and barreled down the corridor towards his foster son's room. The door was open and, to Sandy's dismay, Ryan looked as though he was already back asleep.

The couple cautiously entered the room, making their way to Ryan's bed slowly.

"Ryan…..Ryan."

Linda gently shook the teenager's arm. She glanced up and smiled to acknowledge the Cohens.

"Ryan, wake up, your parents are here."

Kirsten grimaced. Ryan looked truly awful. He was white as a ghost, which only accentuated the ominous bruising. If it was possible, there were more wires and tubes than before he went to surgery, most prominently a skinny tube attached by white tape to the inside of his nose. Yet another tube, forced unnaturally into his body. Suddenly, she didn't want him awake, didn't want him to have to deal with what was happening, what was being done to him.

She and Sandy couldn't help. They wouldn't be able to stop the pain.

"Maybe we should let him sleep," she suggested quietly, looked up at Sandy. "Maybe it's better this way. Better for him."

"He needs to see you Mrs. Cohen," Linda said. "He's confused. Knowing you're here will be good for him."

Kirsten nodded, watched as Linda tried again to wake up Ryan.

His head began shifting and Kirsten nearly jumped. It was the first movement they had seen, the first indication that Ryan would actually come back to them.

"Ryan, open you eyes. Your parents are here."

Sandy, unable to sit on the sidelines any longer, leaned over the bedrail, sharing the space with Linda.

"Hey kid, Kirsten and I don't expect cartwheels. Just open your eyes for us Ryan."

At the sound of Sandy's voice, Ryan's head movements abruptly halted.

"It's Sandy, Ryan. Kirsten and I are both here. I told you we weren't going anywhere."

Ryan's eyelids opened half-mast. Linda noticed that the lack of visual acuity was diminished. The teenager instantly zeroed in on his father.

"Hi kid," Sandy smiled. "It is damn nice to see you."

Linda subtly stepped away, making room for Kirsten, who slid in next to her husband, slipping her hand into Ryan's right one. She rubbed the top of it and stopped when she realized he was trying to grab her fingers.

His grip was stronger than she would have thought it would be.

Ryan opened his eyes a little more, back and forth, from Sandy to Kirsten.

Kirsten felt better with the decision to wake him. The nurse was right. Ryan needed this.

She'd never seen the normally unreadable teenager look so scared or vulnerable. Not even in jail, not even with an arm wrapped around his neck attempting to cut off his oxygen supply. Not even being led away handcuffed, not even waving goodbye to his mother.

Kirsten waited for her time with him, listening to Sandy's sanitized explanation as to why Ryan was waking up in a hospital bed, restrained, medical equipment for an anchor.

When Sandy finished speaking, Ryan appeared a little calmer.

He trusted them. Always trusted them. Even here, probably in pain, half-asleep, confused, scared, he still trusted her and Sandy to make things right.

Sandy stepped aside, drew her in closer with his arm around her waist.

Kirsten leaned over the railing, kissed Ryan on the cheek, pushed back his hair, whispered into his ear, "Welcome back. We missed you."

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End of part 8


	9. Six Days After Christmas Part 9

Six Days After Christmas

Part 9

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He couldn't keep track of time.

Voices, spread out, here and there.

"I can't believe you guys didn't wake me up. Did he say anything? Well, that's a stupid question, my bad. Maybe we can teach him sign language or Morse code. Dad, do you remember how to …."

Seth's voice was always the loudest.

"Ryan, dude, you really need to wake up. You have a new nurse and she is smoking hot. I think she's diggin' on me…"

"So, Mom and Dad went to make some phone calls. I'm about to be kicked out. The nurse needs to do one of those check things. Summer's here. I'm getting some weird vibes. I mean, I know it's completely nail in the coffin over, but it's strange you know, almost like we were still going out. She's just being nice, I know that…"

Little by little, the fog was lifting.

Like he was a ghost ship, floating silently on waves, heading towards the lit shore.

But the drugs were still numbing his ability to participate in real time. He would fall asleep with one visitor and wake up to another. It was as if he had his own psychedelic time zone.

"Ryan, can you squeeze my hand?"

Not even fully awake, he anticipated the question this time, tightened his grip before the nurse finished her request. Managed to open his eyes.

Where was everyone? Where were the voices? Maybe he was dreaming. This was all too confusing. He knew he was in the hospital, was pretty sure of it at least. But he couldn't remember why.

Still couldn't talk, was still being choked, forced to swallow air he didn't want.

And the pain was getting worse, strengthening every time he sort of woke up.

"What's going on with you sweetie?" He heard the nurse ask. "Your heart's racing."

He stared at her, tried to raise his hand to pull out the goddamn tube from his mouth so he could tell her that his body had become a pincushion.

"Are you in pain Ryan?"

God yes, he loved this woman.

He squeezed her hand like there was no tomorrow.

"This will help sweetheart."

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Caleb came around ten.

They were all dog-tired, exiled to the waiting room while Ryan underwent a C-Scan to make sure his kidney had stopped bleeding and his brain hadn't started.

"Cal, you should have called," Sandy rose wearily to greet his father-in-law. "What in the world would lead you to believe that coming here was a good idea?"

Caleb brushed him off. "I'd like to see my daughter Sanford."

"What are you doing here Dad? I'm too exhausted to fight with you and I have no desire to talk to you." Kirsten joined her husband, folded her arms around her midsection. "Please, just go away."

"Ju Ju told me about the boy KiKi. I just came by to see if there's anything I can do."

Kirsten shook her head, "Ryan. His name is Ryan, Dad. It's been Ryan for a year and a half. And you don't give a damn about him. You only came here because you figured you could use his hospitalization as an excuse to weasel your way back into our lives. I want you to get the hell out of here, right now. This isn't the time, the place and I'm no where near ready."

Sandy escorted him out, handing Caleb a piece of paper.

"You want back into my family Cal? This is a damn good place to start. I can't find Ryan's mother by phone and I can't leave this hospital to do it myself. Here's the most current information I have on her. You show up with Dawn Atwood, and just maybe Kirsten will remember a few reasons not to hate you."

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Ryan felt himself rolling, and then come to a standstill.

He tried to clear the cobwebs from his brain.

Something was happening. Something bad. He couldn't remember what.

For a split second he felt his breathing return to his own power, and then just as quick, the forced air returned.

It was maddening.

A soft touch distracted him.

He smelled her perfume.

What was Marissa doing in the pool house?

"Can he hear me?"

"We're not clear on that. It's a possibility, they're lowering his sedation."

Sandy.

He was here too.

Ryan's head hurt. He must have a hang over.

Sandy'll be pissed.

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Lindsay arrived with her mother, their arms loaded down with bags of lunches.

Seth took over distribution, telling Lindsay, "My mom's with Ryan. He's doing a little better. She'll catch you up."

Marissa greeted her with a quiet, "Hi," lead her down the hall, in the direction of Ryan's room.

"I'm only here as his friend. Ryan and I," Marissa stopped in front of Ryan's door, "Ryan and I are still friends. That's ok with you, right? I mean, there's nothing between us anymore. We just, well, we were friends first, before we starting going out. I want to stay in his life, but I don't want to cause problems, between," Marissa fidgeted with her purse, "between you guys. I mean, Ryan, he deserves someone. I want him to be happy."

Unsure what to say, Lindsay remained silent, stared into Ryan's room. Kirsten was in there, reading a magazine with one hand, rubbing Ryan's arm with her free one.

"Um, Ryan and I are, uh," Lindsay laughed nervously, "I'm not really sure what we are."

"Sounds like DJ and I," Marissa said quietly. Then a little louder, "You guys'll figure it out." She pointed towards Ryan's room. "Do you ah, want me to go in with you?"

Lindsay shook her head, "No, thanks, I'm ok."

She watched Marissa leave, walk slowly down the hall.

"Lindsay?"

Kirsten stood, next to Ryan's bed, holding out her hand.

"Hi honey, how are you feeling?"

"I'm ok," Lindsay managed. "Can I uh, come in, is it ok?"

"Yeah, of course," Kirsten pulled up another chair, gave her a quick hug. "Ryan woke up a few hours ago. He's confused, but thank God, he seems to be in there. It's hard you know, with the breathing tube, to really understand what's going on with him. The doctor stopped by earlier. He said they are going to try and take Ryan off the ventilator later this afternoon or tonight. So," Kirsten nodded, "that's really positive news."

Lindsay stood rigid, taking in the mass of medical equipment that surrounded Ryan.

Kirsten had called earlier in the morning, updating them on Ryan's sudden surgery.

Everyone said he was doing better but as Lindsay stood there, scanning Ryan's face, she failed to see much improvement from last night.

He looked worse even, with more tubes and darker bruises.

"Here," Kirsten pointed to the chair closest to the head of the bed, "Have a seat, it's ok. I know all this," she waved a finger up and down the bed, "is intimidating, but it's ok, really. You can touch him, talk to him. I think it helps. I think he knows we're here. Once in while, he'll squeeze one of our hands."

Lindsay sat down, put her hands in her lap.

"This is um, strange," Kirsten said softly, "seeing Ryan like this. It's been hard on Sandy. You know, he's used to protecting Ryan and he can't do anything for him right now. And Seth, I mean, let's face it, he sees Ryan as indestructible. I still think a part of him doesn't want to accept that this is happening."

Lindsay nodded nervously, "I'm sorry. None of this would have happened if I didn't want to stay at the beach. Ryan wanted to go back to the house, but I wanted the ocean, and then we lost track of time. I've been nothing but trouble to you and your family."

"Lindsay, hey, no," Kirsten sat down next to her. "No honey, I didn't tell you those things to make you feel badly. I told you those things because I haven't had anyone else to talk to…since this began and I…you came in the room and it just felt right, to talk to you. I'm sorry. You're already dealing with so much, I had no right to dump my concerns on you."

Lindsay took a deep breath. "I'm so clueless. I'm sorry. Please, do talk to me. I want…us to be able to talk to each other. I just, I feel horrible that he's like this, that yesterday we were laughing and now he's…" Lindsay pushed her hair back; "I keep going over it in my mind, what if I had just given the guy my purse right away, or if Ryan hadn't fought back. What if we had just walked to the car a little earlier or a little later? You know what I mean? I can't stop thinking about it."

Kirsten stood up. "A lot of things about Ryan have changed since he moved in with us. But the core things that make him who he is, haven't. Ryan will never lie back while someone he cares about is being mistreated. It's one of the things that reminds me so much of Sandy. Speaking of which, I've been hogging the time with Ryan; it's Sandy's turn. I'll give you guys a few minutes alone while I go get my husband."

Lindsay waited until Kirsten had left before she gingerly stuck out her hand, with a finger lightly poked Ryan's bicep.

"Hi," she said quietly. "It's me. You look like shit Atwood."

She scooted the chair in a little closer, until the arm of it scraped against the side of the bedrail.

"Ryan, can you hear me? I'm here now. They wouldn't let me come earlier. The doctor convinced my mom that I needed like ten hours of bed rest. But I'm not leaving now, not until I know for sure you're ok. And you are going to be ok. Do you hear me? You're the best thing that has ever happened to me and I'm not going to lose you like this."

She settled her hand into his.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His chest was tight, but there wasn't really any pain.

Talking.

Someone other than Seth.

Encouraging.

He tried to follow the conversation.

No commands, no one was telling him what to do, just a steady stream of soothing speak.

He struggled to link the familiar voice to a person and then realized it was Lindsay.

Her voice wavered, unsteady. He felt a kiss on his cheek, followed by something wet.

A hitch in her voice.

She was crying.

He lifted his arm to reach out for her and something abruptly stalled his effort. He remembered the frustrating sensation but not the cause.

She was close to him again, telling him, "I'm right here Ryan. Are you here too, with me?"

Her hand underneath his.

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Sandy needed a minute alone to think. Kirsten had fetched him, giving him an excuse to escape the waiting room and host duties.

He held his hands out in front of him, watched them as they shook.

Too little sleep, an abundance of worries, topped off with a straight shot of parental impotence.

In many ways he admired Seth. His son was at least honest with his terror over Ryan's condition. Sandy wouldn't allow himself the luxury of publicly admitting that seeing Ryan in the hospital bed was overwhelming and devastating. Any confusion of whether or not Ryan was still a child was settled the minute Sandy saw him, last night, swallowed up by the all-encompassing ICU.

"Ok Ryan," Sandy whispered quietly to himself. He took several deep breaths, scratched his left eyebrow. "Ok kid."

As he entered the room, he was met by an excited Lindsay. She swiveled around in her chair to get a look at him, one hand clamped tightly on Ryan's right one.

"He squeezed my hand," she clamored, wiped tears away with her free hand. "Ryan squeezed my hand."

"Well that's good news," Sandy smiled at her, hoped she wouldn't notice that he was too tired to fake all out euphoria. "I guess that means you better stay."

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"Are you still completely freaked Cohen?" Summer asked him. "'Cause that cute doctor guy said that Ryan is doing a lot better, so, that's good, right? You can stop being so Chicken Little."

They were walking. Where to, it didn't really matter. He had needed to get out of the stifling waiting room for just a few minutes, and hadn't even realized that she was tagging along until her perfect little slipper clad foot had blocked the elevator door from closing.

Seth stopped moving, looked out a window. People still living real life, people who didn't have a best friend in the ICU, were participating in the post-lunch rush to quitting time.

"I've decided to measure my paranoia in terms of how many tubes are sticking out of Ryan. We're still on high alert."

"That's not very scientific Cohen," she chastised him.

"Well," Seth bobbed his head, "I'm ok with not placing in the fair this year."

He continued to stare out the window, told her, "When I think about the fact that some bastard did this to him, and that he's still joy driving around in my mom's car, and doesn't even care that Ryan is…" He lowered his head, muttered, "I don't know, I don't know, I think if I had a gun, I could fucking…Or at least hire someone. I don't know, take out an ad? Something."

He felt her lift his head, found himself staring at her, tears starting again. He tried to shake loose, didn't want Summer to see him crying, but she held on tight.

"Hey," she raised on the tip of her toes, practically touched his face with hers, "Shhhh."

Kissed him softly on the lips.

"Summer," he asked quietly, hesitantly, "What is this? What am I suppose to think about this?"

"This is me, making you, feel better Cohen. Do you feel better?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Most definitely." He kissed her back.

"Then don't think about it Cohen. Don't ruin it. Let me help you. Besides, I told the nurse we were kissing cousins."

"Hee fuckin' Haw," whispered Seth and closed his eyes as he kissed her again.

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Time was passing.

He was more aware, was getting better at comprehending what they were telling him.

They.

The other voices.

The voices other than Sandy or Kirsten or Seth or Lindsay.

"Ryan. Open your eyes."

He immediately did it.

He was going to win Best In Show he was becoming so freaking obedient.

Do what they want the first time and the quicker they left you the hell alone and let someone else come in.

Someone else who was Sandy or Kirsten or Seth or Lindsay.

This time.

This time he was gonna' stay awake long enough to…well, he was gonna' stay awake.

Start with a simple, obtainable goal.

His chest and stomach were starting to hurt; like the pain was crawling its' way out quicksand, slow, sometimes slipping back, but then emerging a little more.

His head never really ever stopped aching, always a dull throb. Sometimes worse, sometimes enough to even block the voices.

"Ryan?"

He shifted his eyes, momentarily panicked that he may have fallen asleep. They didn't like it when he dozed off mid-command. The light in his eyes usually followed and he had no desire for that evil thing to make a reappearance.

"Hey, so you are awake. That's great man. Nice to see you conscious. My name is Ted Elders. I'm your doctor. Yes, another one. I know, there are like a bazillion of us. Here's the deal. In order for you to lose this tube in your mouth, we need to kind of ease back on how much the vent is helping you breathe. We've been doing that a little bit, but it's time to get down to business. Right now, the vent's still pretty much doing all of the hard work for you, which is what it is supposed to do, help that lung of yours reinflate. But hey, all good things must come to an end right? So tell you what, I'm gonna' fidget a bit with this button right here…"

Ryan heard beeps, and then Ted resumed talking.

"There we go. So now my man, you are controlling the vent instead of it controlling you. Go on; take a breath, nice deep one. Oh, and I should probably warn you, it's going to hurt like hell. But hey, no pain no gain, right guy? Seriously, here, I have like the strongest hands in HOAG. Breathe and squeeze."

Ryan stared at him. His chest already hurt. He was supposed to now make it worse?

Voluntarily?

"Ok, maybe I wasn't actually clear on the whole breathing thing." Ted slowed down his speech. "Breathe in…not…don't breathe."

Ryan took a tentative, quick gulp of air. The vent allowed the attempt, but forced additional air in. He tore into Dr. Elders' hand, the pain flaring instantly.

"See, deep is the key. Until that vent is telling me you are doing all the work, you aren't getting off it. And believe me, you want to do this yourself Ryan, don't make us take over the job of weaning you, 'cause I promise, that's a whole 'nother bag of misery. What do you say, another deep breath?"

Ryan fought back a pressing urge to panic, concentrated on the ocean, waves rolling in, washing out. He timed his next breath on a wave leaving the beach, tried to hold out as long as he could, go as deep as he could, back into the salty water.

He was breaking out into a sweat, just trying to cope with the aftershocks of taking a semi-unassisted breath.

And he was supposed to do this all night?

Was this guy delusional?

"That was better Ryan. You are like hard-core man, seriously. The nurses are all a flutter about what an amazingly cooperative patient you are. Most of the action they see is old, wrinkly and angry."

Ryan took another breath, arched his back slightly with the accompanying pain. But it was a little better. He was ready for it that time. He felt the vent push in a much smaller amount of air.

"That's great Ryan, you're doing awesome. Tell you what. I have a surprise, a little thing I like to call 'Ditch the Soft Restraints'.

Ryan forgot about his breathing for a second. Shifted his eyes to meet Ted's. "Oh, got your attention huh? Figured that would. Now that you are somewhat back on the planet Earth, we're gonna' take one of these babies off and see if you maintain your blue ribbon for cooperation. Understand me Ryan? Fight me, go after that breathing tube or anything else attached to you, and the restraint goes right back on and doesn't come off until tomorrow at the earliest. It's all a test Ryan, to see if you are ready to start taking control again."

Ted tapped his head with an index finger. "Your noggin took a knockin'. I'm guessing you are well aware of that. And you need to prove that it's not affecting you adversely, understand? So here we go."

Ryan heard the doctor call for the nurse. He struggled to maintain some sort of breathing pattern, finding that if he fell behind, the machine inevitable forced oxygen in anyway. He was getting sleepy. It wasn't fair, really. He'd stayed awake all this time and no Cohens or Lindsay.

"Ryan, you still alive? Yeah you are, I see you breathing."

Ryan opened his eyes. Couldn't get them all the way open this time. Ted, the strange doctor guy, would have to settle for an unintentional glare.

"Ok, Sue, Ryan here and I have had a long talk and he is absolutely going to behave himself."

The nurse moved into position beside Ryan's left arm. "That's what I like to hear Dr. Elders," the woman answered casually, began unwrapping Ryan's wrist. "All done," she announced.

Ryan lay perfectly still, terrified that any movement would spell uncooperative behavior. When his next breath set his lungs on fire, he unconsciously used his free hand to steady himself against the bedrail, gripping it as tight as he could. The newly liberated hand helped. Gave his mind something else to do besides anticipate excruciating pain.

"When you fall asleep Ryan, we have to restrain you again. It's not your fault; it's just a natural reaction on your body's part to remove all these foreign objects from it. But for right now? Enjoy your freedom. Next time you wake up, we'll take them both off, ok? And," Ted glanced at his watch, "I don't get out of this place until tomorrow morning so, with a little luck, we'll have this tube out by midnight. You, my man, are teacher's pet. I mean it Ryan, I'm putting your desk at the head of the class."

Dr. Elders squeezed Ryan upper arm.

"Sue, I'm going to go update Mom and Dad, then I'll send them in. What do you say we give Ryan here a little something to take the edge off? I doubt that bed rail is going to make it through the night."

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Somehow, breathing was getting a little easier. He took yet another painful breath but shuddered a little less this time. His chest still felt like it was in a vise, but it was at least a vise that he was sort of controlling. It made him feel a little less edgy, a little more grounded.

"Open your eyes Ryan, your family is here. Don't forget to keep up your breathing."

Ryan shifted his head as much as he could manage given the constraints of the endotracheal tube attached to the ventilator.

Sandy and Kirsten…

And Seth.

Grinning like a fool.

"Finally," Seth buzzed. "Give a brother a break Ryan. 'Bout time you stayed awake long enough to listen to me bitch about my loathsome trip to the Emersons' I had to take. Let me tell you, my man Atwood. You? Got off easy."

Seth wound his way around to Ryan's left side, nudged his unrestrained hand.

"We forgot our fundamental rule Ryan; stay together or people get hurt."

He lifted up his hand for a high five. Ryan managed a waist high one, barely clearing the bed rail.

"I'm only giving you a two for that Ryan. That's middle-high two. No five today. I'm being generous with the two."

From the other side of the room, Sandy commented, "I'd say given current conditions, that was sufficient."

"Yes indeed," Seth agreed.

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"So he's really awake?" Marissa asked hopefully.

"Well no," Seth changed his answer. "I mean he was awake, which is, you know, extraordinary for a guy that was like in a drug induced coma fifteen hours ago. But he's asleep now. They have him on about ninety painkillers and I guess he's still sedated a little bit. The um, nurse said he should wake up in about three hours and then they are going to keep him awake long enough to get rid of the breathing tube."

"That's great, I told you guys Ryan would be fine," Summer purred.

"So where are your parents?" Marissa asked, either ignoring the familiar sexual tension that was returning to Seth and Summer's relationship, or completely clueless to it.

"They uh, they went to a bigger lounge downstairs to crash for a few hours. My dad is so over-caffeinated, I'm surprised he hasn't stroked out. And The Mom is like on the verge of remodeling this waiting room, so you know, she could use a little down time to rechannel the stress."

"This has been awful on them Cohen. When Chino gets out of here, we are so going to drag both your parents in for a deep tissue massage."

"And Lindsay?" Marissa continued to map out everyone's whereabouts.

"She um," Seth's face reddened a little, "She's in with Ryan. We both, her and I, promised to take this shift."

"Well, that's really good," Marissa reasoned and Seth wondered just who she was trying to convince. "I mean, Ryan should have people in there that he cares about."

Seth dropped his shoulders a bit. "Ryan still cares about you Marissa."

"I know that," Marissa forced a smile. "It's been great, being friends with him. I just meant, he's with Lindsay now, so it's better this way. Sum and I are pretty exhausted anyway, so, we should take off."

"Yeah," Summer agreed. "I mean, ew, no shower today. But you'll call us," she jabbed a finger into Seth's chest, "With any news, got it?"

Seth chuckled, put his hand over her finger, and returned it to her side.

"Whoa, slow down there Quick Draw. Pinkie swear to call if anything of interest develops."

He quickly interlocked pinkies with each of the girls, walked them to the elevators.

"Thanks, you guys." Seth pushed his hair back, kept his hand plastered on his head. "For coming down. I um, I really appreciate it. I'll tell Ryan you were here."

He spoke to both of them, but focused in on Summer, pursed his lips together, poked her playfully in the stomach. "So, Grande Nacho thank you, you little Candy Striper you, delivering your hospital cheer. But next time, I want gum."

"Maybe next time you'll get it," she said mysteriously, winked at him and got in the elevator.

As the door closed, Seth gestured his patented cheesy smile wave.

Where in the hell things were going with him and Summer he didn't have a clue. But she proved something today. She still cared for him and about him and that, for now, was enough.

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"On three Ryan, deep breath, hold on tight, and blow out like hell."

Ryan's heart raced. He was scared. He had spent most of his waking hours trying hard not to imagine how the tube got in his throat in the first place. Now he had to actually take an active role in removing it.

"One."

He frantically locked eyes with Ted.

"Head of the class Ryan. You're my current overachiever. This is gravy compared to everything else you've been through."

"Two."

His eyes narrowed in on the respiratory specialist's hand as it gripped the breathing tube.

"Deep breath now Ryan. Blow out."

"Three."

The sensation of the tube grinding against the back of his throat stole the breath from Ryan. He was sure he blew out, but the rest of the ordeal was engulfed in the most painful experience of his life- coughing post collapsed lung.

Damn, he was barely breathing and now his lungs were threatening a walk-out.

How the hell was he supposed to cough and still stay alive?

Tears started rolling down his face as he struggled to get some air in. The coughing and gagging sensation was causing something in his stomach to spring to life and he tasted a horrible substance spewing out of his mouth.

"Shit, get me a mask," he heard Dr. Elders say, while other hands directed his head over a pink Tupperware looking thing.

Not much came up, but what did was thick and dark. Ryan gulped and gasped. He was dizzy, felt his head droop forward into the hands already supporting him.

"Ryan, calm down and breathe."

Novel idea, he thought. If he wasn't passing out, he might try it.

His vision started to collapse in on itself, expanding inward, advancing like a black hole.

He was aware of being flopped back onto the bed like a fish, carefully, but still enough to cause some pain. He flinched, moaned, took in breaths much too quickly, making high pitched hitching sounds.

The black took over.

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"Ryan, wake up. What are his stats?"

"His pulse ox reading is ninety-two percent and his respiratory rate is 14. Do you want me to ambu?" Sue reported, anxiously rifling through the crash cart for supplies,

"Not yet", Dr. Elders responded. "Let's switch him to the non-rebreather at eighty percent oxygenation stat."

Ted's voice, not so much a surfer dude anymore, more like a drill sergeant.

"Ryan Atwood. Wake up now Ryan."

Ryan's hand reached for the uncomfortable oxygen mask. The tube still up his nose combined with the oxygen mask was driving him crazy. Someone intercepted his hand, placed it to his side.

"Na-uh. I seriously need some nice deep breaths Ryan. You're pushing the limits of my comfort level here buddy. Give me something to prove to me that we're not in over our heads."

Ryan's instincts kicked in. Always do what they tell you to do the first time, or more poking, more prodding. Don't piss these people off, they have total control.

With both hands now free, he gripped the sides of the bed, took a deep breath and almost passed out again from the pain.

"That's it," Ted aligned himself with Ryan's barely open eyes.

"Give me another one."

And so it continued until Dr. Elders gave Ryan a pat on the head, Sue gave him an ice chip and some lady he had never seen before took off his vomit stained gown and dressed him in a new one.

Naked in front of total strangers was bad.

Finally comprehending what landed you in the hospital was even worse. Although exhausted from the ordeal of extubation, Ryan studied his body. There were bandages and ugly bruises everywhere. There was a fucking tube sewn into his side, skinny tubes sewn into his chest, right below his collarbone. Little white circles, attached to wires, all around his upper body. As the nurse moved the blanket down further to assist Ryan with putting on the clean gown, he caught sight of the Foley catheter and suddenly realized why periodically his dick felt like a small man was drilling it for oil.

"All done," the woman cheerfully announced. She didn't tie the back and Ryan wondered why she even bothered at all to put anything on him. The gown slunk down, barely staying above his shoulders.

Upffff, his head.

The coughing had caused a volcanic reaction in his brain. He was sure gray matter was leaking out from his ears. He reached up to rub his temple and froze as his hand came in contact with a huge bandage.

And scalp. No hair, just skin.

He scratched at it to be sure. It felt weird, almost like rubber.

He was bald.

Not everywhere he deduced, as he frantically felt the other side of his head for evidence of hair. It was still there, on the left side.

But gone on the other. How much hair he was missing, he didn't have a clue.

He didn't want to know.

"Ryan," Sue said his name softly. "Your throat must be killing you honey, have a few more ice chips."

She gently removed his hand from his head, put it to his side, lifted the oxygen mask long enough to slip a few more chips in.

Ryan couldn't stop his macabre scavenger hunt. He gingerly felt the area around his face. If his head was shaved, maybe there was damage to his face.

"Ryan."

Sue again.

"Honey. It's ok. You've been pretty out of it. You're tired, you've just been extubated. Close your eyes, don't worry about all this. Things will seem better in the morning. I'm going to give you something to help you relax you a little bit."

He let the drug wash over him, was a good little boy, took his deep breaths, didn't try and remove the oxygen mask. His lungs were two heavy stones that he was somehow managing to keep afloat. His head was a hollow drum, vibrating with each little noise.

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Ryan's current doctor made Sandy uneasy. He reminded him of about a dozen friends at Berkeley, all of whom had been too stoned to graduate.

But, to give the guy credit, he had promised that Ryan would be breathing on his own by midnight and sure enough, it was 11:38 and evidently Ryan was on schedule.

"He lost consciousness?" Kirsten asked worriedly. "What does that mean? Is the head injury getting worse?"

"No, not at all Mrs. Cohen." Ted shook his head. "Despite the NG tube, Ryan managed to vomit some bile. That action caused a coughing episode and he just couldn't catch his breath, momentarily wasn't getting enough oxygen. But he was only under a matter of seconds, thirty, forty at the most. He's doing exceptionally well now, although I do have him on a non-rebreather oxygen mask. This isn't unusual. Most patients require some amount of assistance following extubation. We'll keep an eye on his lung of course, make sure it's keeping up its' end of the bargain. And he'll be monitored constantly for his oxygen saturation levels. But don't worry, your son continues to impress me with his tenacity. I'm sure he'll work like hell to avoid another intubation."

Ted scribbled something in a frayed notebook.

"I have other patients I need to check on, but I'll be around, definitely within the next few hours, to monitor him and begin some simple deep breathing exercises with Ryan. Everyday it'll get a little easier. I used to work strictly in Pediatrics. Kids never cease to amaze me with their recuperative abilities. In the meantime, Ryan could use a friendly face in there. I'm quite sure he thinks we were trying to kill him."

Sandy and Kirsten told Seth and Lindsay to sit tight, wait for them.

Ryan's room was dark, less light than there had been since the ordeal began. It seemed more like a typical hospital room, less like a neutral zone between the living and the struggling to stay alive.

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He heard the nurse in the background. "I just gave him some Ativan, Mr. and Mrs. Cohen. He was getting a little agitated. It's a good sign, really. Ryan is becoming more and more aware of his surroundings and naturally, it's a little unsettling. But he's turned a corner. He's cooperating fully, not the least bit combative. He's clearly responding appropriately to verbal instructions."

A slight shuffling of feet.

Ryan squeezed his eyes shut.

He didn't want to see anyone, have anyone see him.

He felt like Frankenstein, a freak on display.

He could hear his pathetic breathing, couldn't hide how much pain he was in.

"Ryan?"

Kirsten's soft voice.

He turned away from it; ground his head into the pillow.

More shuffling of feet.

Ryan cracked open one eye. Sandy stood next to him. He was trapped, Kirsten on one side, Sandy on the other.

"Hey," Sandy squatted down. "What's going on? You're doing terrific, Ryan. The doctors are all impressed with how much progress you've made."

Ryan felt a tear slip out. What the hell? He hadn't cried since his dad had been arrested. These damn drugs were making him unstable, turning him to mush.

"Ryan, it's ok. Are you in pain? Do you want me tell the nurse?"

Ryan tugged at the oxygen mask, lowered it, rasped out a sound, swallowed, regrouped, tried again to communicate.

"I don't understand why I'm here."

Breathy. High, like human helium. He didn't recognize his own voice, was shocked by how much that one sentence took out of him.

"Do you remember anything Ryan?"

"No," he shook his head, clenched his eyes at the pain the movement gave him.

"I parked the cars. I drove people home. Did I crash one?"

"No sweetie," Kirsten joined in, "Ryan you did absolutely nothing wrong."

"I don't understand any of this."

Sandy leaned in close, Ryan was fading, his voice with him.

"I'm bald."

"Only partially," Sandy corrected him. "Ask Caleb, there's a big difference."

Painful deep breaths. Somewhere along the way, Sandy's hand replaced the bedrail.

A barely audible, "You had to come home early."

Sandy replaced the oxygen mask, brushed back Ryan's hair, thumbed away a tear.

"We never should have left."

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End of part 9


	10. Six Days After Christmas: The Conclusion

Six Days After Christmas

Conclusion

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The fifth and sixth days after Christmas were a mosaic of lucid and fragmented moments.

He mostly floated on a constant sea of voices.

Seth's was still the loudest.

"Seth, lower that television."

"Geez mom, or shall I say, Volume Nazi, I thought we were supposed to stimulate his brain."

"That was three days ago Seth, Ryan needs to sleep now. So either lower the volume on that television or go out to the waiting room."

Ryan woke up smiling.

"Oh good, he's up. I've got five bucks he can't remember a damn thing. What you are you in for Lindsay?"

"Um," Ryan heard his girlfriend falter, "Let's see. He did remember George Bush yesterday, so, uh, put me down for five that he remembers 2 out of 3."

"Dad?"

"I'm with you Seth."

"Mom?"

No answer. Ryan was fuzzy on what the discussion was pertaining to, but obviously Kirsten wanted none of it.

He took a deep breath, relieved that it was a little easier, a little less painful. The respiratory therapy hurt like a bitch, but it was helping.

He was breathing now without supplemental oxygen. All those tubes that were sewn in to him were gone too.

"Ryan, hey. You want anything to drink?"

"No." His own voice continued to surprise him. He still sounded like he was a few months shy of puberty.

"Are you feeling ok sweetie? Do you want me to call the nurse?"

For Kirsten, he opened an eye, gave her a half smile, "No thanks."

"Let the poor kid sleep," Sandy suggested. "Every time he moves, you people kill him with kindness."

"Um, excellent idea Father but first, your public awaits Ryan. Tell us, please, what day is it?"

Seth fanned his hands, impatient for an answer.

Ryan remained silent.

"Uh –huh," Seth responded to Ryan's lack of response. "That's one for us Dad. And tell us big guy, where are you?"

"Hospital."

"Yes!" Ryan heard Lindsay slap a high five with someone he presumed was Kirsten.

"Oh please," Seth dismissed Lindsay's triumph. "That one was a slam dunk. Say, do you have any questions for us Ryan?" Seth asked leadingly. "Like perhaps….why are you here?"

Ryan had a sudden flash.

_Beating someone up, a gun, cold against his head._

"I was in a fight. Did someone shoot me?"

The room grew silent.

"No more of this game Seth," Kirsten's authoritative voice broke the stillness. "These questions stop today. It's not funny anymore. It was never funny."

"You were hurt during a carjacking, Ryan," Sandy told him. "Today is the first day you have remembered any of it, the first time you haven't woken up completely disoriented."

"How long ago?" he asked, trying to wrap his mind around the information.

"Four days, if you count today," Sandy answered. Quick, to the point. It reminded Ryan of court.

"I have respiratory therapy."

"Yes," Kirsten pulled his blanket up a little higher. "You always remember that. The doctors tell us it has something to do with when the injury occurred, but concussions are tricky and you took quite a knock on the head."

"I've been here for four days?" Ryan asked incredulously. "How can that be possible?"

"Oh, it is, believe me," Seth chimed in.

Ryan surveyed the room and its' occupants.

The Cohens all looked exhausted, deep circles under their eyes.

"Does my mom know? Is she here?"

Sandy cleared his throat. "Uh, no Ryan, we're still trying to track her down. Caleb, of all people, has been helping."

Ryan nodded silently, tried to convince himself that Dawn's absence didn't matter.

He had a memory of waking up yesterday, asking for her when his head hurt so bad that he thought for sure it was splitting into two separate skulls.

Kirsten, he remembered.

Kirsten had stayed with him instead.

He spotted Lindsay in the corner, her face wet with tears.

Flashes.

_Crying, yelling at him to stop fighting, hugging herself in fear._

"Are you ok?" He asked her.

"Yeah," Lindsay nodded, put her hand to her face. "I just keep crying like an idiot every time you wake up."

"You were there."

"Yes," Lindsay nodded.

"You were mad at me."

"No," Lindsay shook her head. "I was amazed by you."

"You know what? I'm hungry," Sandy suddenly announced. "Kirsten honey, are you hungry?"

"Yes," Kirsten nodded slowly, "I think I am. Starving actually. You too Seth, move it."

"But I'm not hungry," Seth began to protest.

"Yes you are," Sandy shoved his son out into the hallway.

"I guess I am," was the last thing Ryan heard before the door shut.

"They are so very subtle," mocked Lindsay. "Do you think they are trying to give us some alone time?"

"This is a different room," Ryan observed, still trying to orientate himself with everything. "It's quieter."

"You were moved here from ICU yesterday. Thank God, 'cause I don't think I could have survived another day in that little waiting room," Lindsay answered him.

She settled herself in the chair recently vacated by Kirsten.

"You….scared the shit out of me, everyone. Even yesterday, I was still worried. But today," she held out her finger. "You remind me of a certain lab partner I have."

"Really?" Ryan asked. "Does he sound like Mickey Mouse?"

"A little," she laughed. "Kind of looks like him too, has ears that stick out."

Ryan grew silent, finally asking, "What happened to us? I don't remember very much. Or…" he gave her a shy glance, "anything."

Lindsay moved to the corner of the bed, careful of his chest and abdomen, wary of the IV's. He was still Humpty Dumpty, still being stitched together.

But he was hers, and she wanted him, tubes and all.

Ryan eased over, made more space for her, encouraged her to sit on the bed.

Yesterday it was the same. Ryan had little memory of the last few days' events, but he seemed to sense that their relationship had entered a new level of intimacy. He seemed to want her close.

She went slowly, filling in all the details.

He had to take deep breaths between questions.

Finally when she was done retelling the story of the attack, Ryan leaned back on his pillow, yawned.

"You weren't hurt?"

"Not a scratch," Lindsay assured him.

"Did they find Kirsten's Rover?"

"Yeah, but it's totaled. Kirsten doesn't care. It's covered by insurance. She's just worried about you Ryan, she doesn't care about the car."

Ryan closed his eyes, couldn't keep them open to save his life.

"I remember the beach," he said dreamily. "We were sitting on the beach."

"Yes," Lindsay resisted the urge to break down into tears again. She had cried enough over the past four days. It was time to stop.

"I couldn't breathe, so I remembered the waves."

"Did it work?" Lindsay asked, curious as to the origin of the comment. Was he referring to the parking lot, the ambulance, the hospital? He has been struggling to breathe in a myriad of locations lately.

"Yes," he burrowed down deeper, put his head on her shoulder. "It helped."

The medicine and head injury were making him more emotional, his speech more simplistic, his actions more dependent. He repeated questions constantly. Yesterday he had permitted Sandy to help feed him without even a glare. The rest of them had left the room, leaving the task to Sandy, allowing Ryan his privacy. Eventually the memories would start to stick. No one wanted Ryan to perceive his vulnerability as a weakness.

The doctors told them the residual effects would last a few more days, maybe even weeks, depending on his need for painkillers and how well his brain recovered from the trauma.

This Ryan was different.

He made Seth uncomfortable, although Lindsay could tell that Seth was trying hard to hide it. She missed the old Ryan too. But he was coming back to them, little pieces at a time. So far, this morning, he was more alert than ever before.

Ryan coughed, caught his breath. "When I get out, we'll go back, to the ocean."

Four days ago, she would have never dreamt of ever returning to the boardwalk. But Ryan was on to something.

Why the hell should those assholes rob them of that place?

She studied his dark blonde hair, ran her fingers over the sprouting stubble that was replacing the bald spot with surprisingly fast growth.

The bandage was gone, leaving an ugly scar with intermittent staples.

He was still the most beautiful boy she had ever seen.

Lindsay kissed him softly on the lips, teased, "Fine. You're on Atwood, first date out of here. But this time, I'm driving."

He grinned as he drifted back asleep.

An 'old Ryan' smile.

Mischievous.

Another piece of him, falling back into place, putting him back together again.

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THE END! Thanks for reading.


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